Iron Infinity
by DuncanIdaho2014
Summary: Dr. Strange saw NO future where Thanos didn't win and wipe out the universe. Still, they valiantly try. Broken and defeated, Stephen enacts a desperate gamble, using the Time Stone to send Tony ten years into the past, right back to when he met Yinsen. Armed with foresight and terrible resolve, Tony WILL protect the planet. OR, how Tony accidentally became a God.
1. Iron Man

**If Thou haveth a Plot Bunny, though shalt write it out. Isn't that the rule? So, here it is, enjoy!**

* * *

Tony ached. His chest felt like someone had ripped open his ribcage and pulled out his heart, his head pulsed with the sadistic spike of a jackhammer with each drop of blood, and his mouth felt dry as the Sahara with the taste of death stuck on his tongue. Most people didn't know about that, that death had a taste, not just a smell or a look. Something cloying and wrong that clung to your taste buds like bad medicine.

What had happened?

" _I went forward in time to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict."_

" _How many did you see?"_

" _Fourteen million, six hundred and five."_

" _How many did we win?"_

 _Tony felt his guts sink at the numb, distant look in the doctor/wizard's eyes. "We didn't."_

It was cold, so cold, colder than that alien world with a red sky. It was dark, and the sounds were off, like he was in a cave.

Where was he?

" _You throw another moon at me and I'm going to lose it."_

" _Stark."_

" _You know me?"_

" _I do. You're not the only one cursed with knowledge."_

 _Tony looked at the monster, the source of all his fear and grief ever since New York and hated how the view was like some twisted mirror: another genius that couldn't tell the difference between saving the world and destroying it. "My only curse is you."_

Water. He needed water. He opened blurry eyes, trying to take in his surroundings. Was that a cup? He moved to reach, his arm trembling, but something tugged on his chest with a stab of agony.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," came a calm, sophisticated voice with an accent.

Why was this so familiar?

" _When I'm done, half of humanity will still be alive. I hope they remember you." Thanos grinned. Damn him, this was_ respect. _This was_ kindness _to the crazy fucker, wasn't it?_

" _Stop!"_

There was something on his chest. Tony reached up, ripping at the white things he realized were bandages.

 _Dr. Strange, the Time Stone glowing like a green sun in his hand, glyphs curling around his arm._

" _Turn back the clock however many times you want, the results will still be the same."_

" _Stark! Remember, we don't have to win. But he has to lose! Make it count!"_

 _Half-dazed from the fight, Tony watched with dull eyes as the beam came rushing for his head._

There it was. A circle of black metal, wires running out from it to a car battery.

Tony's eyes went from the horror of his distant past to his companion. Yinsen stood, alive and well, shaving cream still clinging to his neck, watching him with sharp eyes.

He was back.

He was back.

Motherfucking hell, he was _back_.

Getting the breathing tube out and sitting upright was enough to exhaust Tony. Not surprising, considering he'd endured open heart surgery without drugs just hours ago. The conversation with Yinsen played out like a vivid flashback, Tony still half in denial that this was actually happening. No grandfather paradox, no drug trips, he was actually, legitimately in the past.

In fact, it wasn't until he refused Abu Bakaar and the torture started that he was convinced all this was real.

Waterboarding was a _blast_.

Afterwards, he'd been led out of the cave into the sunlight. Tony barely remembered to count the steps, still dealing with being forcibly reminded that this was REAL. Seeing the cases and cases of guns and missiles, all with the Stark Industries logo proudly displayed, was like a punch to the gut. They were hardly his 'children', the way DUM-E and U and Butterfingers were, but his genius had given birth to them. At the time, he'd consoled himself that he was making things better for the good guys.

' _Peace means having a bigger stick than the other guy.'_

Now, the sight of tools of destruction with his name on them nearly made him sick.

He nodded and smiled at Abu Bakaar, noting Raza standing on a hill overlooking the whole operation. Then it was back into the cave, back into the cold. Yinsen scavenged up a few more articles of clothing to give him as a weak barrier against the chill. Tony spent a long time just staring into the fire. Thinking, processing, _planning_.

"I'm sure they're looking for you, Stark. But they will never find you in these mountains." Yinsen was talking to him, mistaking his silence for brooding. "Listen, what you saw out there, _that_ is your legacy, Stark. Your life's work in the hands of those murderers! Are you just going to take it? Is this the last act of defiance of the great Tony Stark? Or are you going to do something about it?" The doctor leaned in, trying to draw a response from his silent companion.

"What? Oh, no, of course not. First thing I'm going to is build myself a new ticker, keep me alive better than this cockamamie piece of crap, no offense. After that, I'm going to build a weapon the world's never seen to smash our way out of here. In three months, you and I will be walking away from a pile of rubble and ash. Then we get picked up by the Air Force and I go home with you as my new personal physician. I'm still working out what comes after that but give me a few days and I'll tell you."

Yinsen was honestly taking a back. "What?"

"Oh, the personal physician thing? Yeah, like hell I'm letting anyone else touch this thing stuck in my chest. You're the guy who put it there, you get stuck looking after it and me. Besides, I owe you my life, so like hell I'm leaving you to rot here or get yourself killed in a blaze of glory or whatever the hell you were planning on before I showed up. Oh, where are my manners? Tony Stark, you are?"

"… Ho Yinsen," the stunned man answered.

"Nice to meet you, Yinsen. Let's get some sleep. We got a lot of work ahead of us. These bastards won't know what hit them." Tony flashed a true grin, not the fake thing he'd mastered for the cameras. "I'm getting both of us out of here. You have my word."

Yinsen gulped. Hope was something he'd abandoned long ago. So, what was this warm thing fluttering in his chest when he saw the look in this man's eye? "Careful, Stark. That might not be a promise you can keep."

"I will."

The conviction in those words kept Yinsen awake long after their speaker succumbed to slumber.

* * *

Tony had a plan.

In point of fact, he had a main plan, a back-up plan, an ace in the hole, and several contingencies in place for each.

All of them focused on one thing: Thanos neutralized. That was all that mattered. Trillions of lives hinged on the Mad Titan never getting his hands on the Infinity Stones.

The weight of that responsibility was enough to crush an ordinary man.

But he was Tony Stark. He was _not_ ordinary.

Iron Man hadn't been enough to stop Thanos.

But maybe, just maybe, it he played his cards right, Tony Stark could.

Phase 1 involved getting the hell out of Afghanistan. This time with a plus one.

Because if he couldn't even save Yinsen, what the fuck was he even doing this for?

Wasn't the whole point of time travel to fix past mistakes?

Construction of the Mark I Reactor took about a week, the first couple days spent with Tony barking orders to customize his 'workshop' with a harried Yinsen translating after him. He coached Yinsen through how to disassemble a Freedom Line missile and get the precious palladium within. It was almost a nightmare to have the cold chunk of metal back in his chest, the bad taste back in his mouth, the pain and shortness of breath back. Then again, it was still miles better than a rusty magnet hooked up to a car battery.

The two celebrated the successful surgery and the unveiling of the Iron Man design with some backgammon, played on a dusty board with nuts and bolts.

"Where'd you go to school?" Tony asked, trying to build a bond. Hopefully, the more of an attachment the man developed to Tony, the less likely he'd be to act on his suicidal thoughts.

"Cambridge."

"MIT."

"Indeed. Youngest graduate in its history, I hear."

Tony shrugged. Once upon a time, he'd let his advanced intelligence go to his head, thinking it made him better. Now, if anything, he saw it as just another burden it was his destiny to bear.

They rolled a few more turns.

"Where do you come from?"

"I'm from a small town called Gulmira. It's actually a nice place." Yinsen's face was now carefully blank.

"My home's in Malibu. Well, I was born and raised in New York, but that never really felt like home. I mean, Mom and Dad were there, but they died there too. Besides, rest in peace, for all that I was a shitty son, they weren't the best parents. Dad drank and Mom ignored anything unpleasant. Very privileged, not so nurturing childhood for me. Malibu is different. It's sunny, and the water's right there, and it's where my happiest memories are." Tony realized he was rambling. "Sorry. It's just you're kind of the only guy I can talk to around here."

"… I understand." Yinsen reached out to place his gloved hand atop Tony's, a show of solidarity in their shitty situation.

Tony shook his head. Damn, where was all his composure? Maybe he was getting soft in his old (young?) age. Or developing a dust allergy from being stuck in this hole. Yeah, that's more like it.

"How about you? You got a family?" Tony waited, curious if Yinsen would lie again.

"I did, yes." Yinsen had a voice filled with numb pain.

Tony winced. "Sorry."

"It's not your fault."

"Not so sure about that. My name was on the guns, wasn't it?"

"You are no more responsible than the man who invented gunpowder. The fault lies with the men who pulled the trigger, not the man who signed off on the trigger design."

Tony sighed. "Yeah. Really wish I could believe that."

Yinsen hummed. "What about you, Stark? Do you have anyone?"

Tony hesitated. In a future rendered moot, he'd been happily married. Some of his last words to Pepper had been hints that he was ready for fatherhood. Except that Pepper was GONE. She was ten years of trauma and tears and growth away that he was determined to prevent if only for his own peace of mind. She'd been so good for him, but had he been good for her? Could he really put her through those trials all over again, knowing the pain it would cause her? She'd be better off without him, with Happy or Agent or maybe even Killian if he got some therapy.

"There was a woman. She's… not around anymore."

Yinsen, bless him, didn't ask. "So, you're a man who has everything, and nothing."

"Yeah. But maybe it's better to never have it than lose it. Course, what do I know? I'm just the billionaire playboy and you're the grieving widower. And I should really shut up before I get myself punched in the face. Wouldn't be the first time, not even the first time in Afghanistan."

Yinsen chuckled. "Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?"

"You'd be surprised how few have the guts."

From there, the days blurred. Tony and Yinsen put on a show for the cameras, diligently working on _something_ , though as time went on it became more and more clear that it wasn't a Jericho missile. Tony felt almost insulted about the poor quality of the Mark I Suit as it slowly came together. Sure, he was building it in a cave from a box of scraps, but after the exquisite beauty of nanotech, this clunky hunk of junk almost felt like a slap to the face of Iron Man.

Not that Iron Man existed yet. But still, it was the principle of the matter.

Tony also made sure to fashion some rudimentary armor for Yinsen. Just a few pieces of metal sewed into a shirt, but it was better than nothing.

The confrontation with Raza happened right on schedule. Tony, this time around, was able to keep track of the Urdu. He'd had Yinsen giving him lessons in the evenings as a way to bond and also to stretch his brain. With the ultimatum of a deadline, the descendent of Genghis Khan made his way out of the workshop, tossing the tongs he'd used to threaten Yinsen with a hot coal carelessly.

That night, Tony finished hammering out the faceplate for the armor. He could almost hear majestic music in the background as he dunked the iron skull in water and presented it to a soldering Yinsen.

(Mental Note: make a bot to compose background music for his daily life.)

The day of action arrived. They'd hardly been able to do practice runs, but Tony tried to guide the panicking Yinsen through the process of booting the suit up. The distraction of the door-bomb hardly helped matters. When Tony was halfway through powering up and voices were echoing down the hall, he saw that mad glint enter his friend's eye.

"Yinsen, don't! Your family is waiting for you, but trust me they don't want to see you anytime soon! You're still alive, don't waste it! Don't waste your life!" Tony shouted, echoing the words that Yinsen himself would give him in another life.

Yinsen paused. "… You're right. You're right, Stark."

"Hide. And trust me." Tony stared hard, imploring his friend not to sacrifice himself.

The Afghani visibly struggled, then went for a locker. He yanked out the contents and huddled inside. It would provide at least a little protection from stray bullets.

Meanwhile, the lights dimmed as the Mark 1 Suit came alive for the first time.

The Ten Rings got to be the first in the world to witness the Iron Man armor at work. Tony didn't bother being cruel, but he was ruthless. Every man who got in his way ended up a corpse. Tony was already desensitized after years of being an Avenger. Rather than riding a wave of adrenaline and resentment from months of captivity, he dealt with the men with a cold, calculating efficiency that was all the more terrifying.

"Follow me," he called behind him, to Yinsen who followed in a crouch with a rifle clutched to his armored chest.

This time, Tony didn't miss Raza. The man was hit directly by the rocket, exploding like a fountain of gore. Tony ignored the smell and splatter with cool discipline, while he heard his companion vomit behind him.

"I want you on my back like a koala. I'll set enough of a fire to start off a chain reaction, then we're jetting out of here," Tony explained

"… Alright," Yinsen said, wiping his mouth.

Two minutes later, they were soaring through the air, an explosion at least a thousand feet high chasing after their heels. Tony did his best to aim for a sand dune rather than sun-baked earth and prayed as the fuel in his jet boots ran out.

Turns out Yinsen knew _quite_ a few curse words.

Tearing himself out of his armor and trying to shake sand out of _places_ , the two began wandering in a vaguely 'away' direction. Hours upon hours they spent in the burning sun, their feet cooking into burnt bits of bacon through the thin cover of their shoes, getting woozy with dehydration and heat.

Until, like an eagle through the sky, a Chinook flew overhead.

Tony collapsed to his knees. He was unprepared for the sight of Rhodey (calm, dependable, always-there Rhodey) to walk, to _run_ over to him. No Civil War, no Vision, no spinal fracture. None of that had happened yet. Would never happen at all, by thunder, if Tony had anything to say about it.

"How was the Fun-vee?" were his friend's first words, referencing a joke so long gone in his memory banks it fell flat.

Tony smiled, and cried. The Lieutenant Colonel fell to his knees and embraced him. "Next time, you ride with me, okay?"

* * *

Phase 1 finished itself easily enough. Getting Yinsen cleared and with a visa took a disturbingly small amount of work, with a thankful billionaire and authoritative Colonel backing him up.

Phase 2 began when they landed stateside.

Tony walked off the plane's cargo ramp, scoffing at the ambulance and stretcher waiting for him. "Are you kidding me with this? Get rid of them," he grumbled to Rhodey, diligently at his shoulder. Yinsen walked beside him, taking in his first look of the American West Coast.

Happy and Pepper were waiting, as he'd arranged. Left arm in a sling, dressed in a fine silk suit that felt even more luxurious after months of rough rags, he walked up to his personal assistant/best female friend. Rather than a quip, he greeted her with a hug.

"Thanks for being here," he whispered in her ear, breathing in deep. She'd changed her shampoo. Or, more accurately, she hadn't changed it yet. It hammered home to him that this wasn't HIS Pepper. This was Miss Potts, not Virginia Stark. (Yes, he got her to take his name.)

She shuddered, leaning into him, allowing herself to be weak just with him. "Thanks for coming back."

With great reluctance, Tony pulled away. "Rhodey, get your own ride. Yinsen, this is Pepper Potts, the woman who runs my life. Pepper, this is Yinsen. His job is to make sure I don't drop dead. Now, why don't we all get in the car?"

They clambered in, Happy dutifully grabbing Tony's door. "Where we going, sir?" he asked, as if it hadn't been months since they'd seen each other. That was his own way of comforting Tony.

"Take us to the Hospital, Happy," Pepper asked at the same time Tony ordered "Stark Industries and step on it."

Pepper turned, frowning. "Tony, you need to go to the hospital."

"She has a point, Stark," Yinsen spoke up from the shotgun seat.

"I'm perfectly patched up by you and the nice Air Force medics. All the hospital can do it give me pain meds, and tempting as that is, I have more important things to do today." Tony wasn't messing around. He only had ten years to save the universe. He couldn't afford to wait around. "Pepper, call for a press conference. Hogan, drive."

If they were shocked at the new authoritative side to their employer, they were good enough to hide it. Yinsen, sensing the tension, tried to make a joke.

"I have never had an American cheeseburger."

Tony nodded solemnly. "Right. Happy, drive-thru first. _Then_ the office."

Everyone smiled.

It was a media circus by the time they pulled up to SI. Stane, the two-faced bastard, was waiting there smiling. "Tony! We were going to meet you at the hospital."

"Yeah, well, I had something I had to say first." Tony plastered a fake grin. He didn't have any evidence yet. But by the end of the day, by God, he'd see this traitor in handcuffs.

Tony walked through the crowd of reporters to the prepared podium in the Press Room. He casually brushed past Stane to take pride-of-place. Even with bruises from his escape and a dislocated shoulder, he cut a striking, resolute figure. The press went quiet even without having to be told. In the background, Tony noted Coulson approaching Pepper. He'd deal with SHIELD later. At the moment, he had to steer his company into some very rough waters.

"Hello. As I'm sure all of you know, I've been out of town for a few months." Obligatory chuckles. "In May, I made a weapons demonstration in Afghanistan. I watched with pride as grown men's faces lit up like little boys at the new toy I had brought to show them. On the way back to the base, the convoy was attacked by a terrorist organization known as the Ten Rings. And it is with horror and distress that I report today that both sides were armed with Stark weaponry."

There were gasps and cries for questions, but Tony silenced them with a wave of his hand. He saw Obadiah shift from the corner of his eyes. "I saw young Americans killed by the very weapons I had designed to defend them and protect them. And I saw that I had become part of a system that is comfortable with zero accountability." He didn't have to fake the regret and pain in his words. "Afterwards, I was held hostage, told with a gun to my head that I was to construct the same weapon I had presented. And that's when I realized: I was _that_ guy. The guy that made things that blow up. That's all I was to these men. Maybe that's all I ever was." Tony paused, working through the knot in his throat. "I don't want to be that guy."

"My father founded this company to bring peace to the world. For a long time, it looked like it worked. But now I see that, in furthering his legacy, I've done more harm than good. Of course, he's not around anymore. It's up to me now to leave a legacy. And I don't want it to be a body count." Tony took a breath. Here goes everything. "So, effective immediately, I am shutting down the weapons manufacturing division of Stark International."

Cue an explosion of noise. Unlike last time, Tony weathered it instead of making a dramatic exit.

It took a solid two hours for all the questions to die down. The whole time, Tony could all but feel Stane seething next to him. More than once, he moved to take the podium away from Tony, but the Stark heir rebuffed him. He was through being a puppet. And he was through having fun and leaving the company to Pepper and JARVIS to run itself. The world wasn't ready for Thanos. It would need a defender. Tony had some small measure of untarnished faith in the Avengers to serve as a line of defense, depending on how things were handled, but Stark Industries would be on the frontlines this time. Tony would _make_ the world ready. And the world could love or hate him for it, he didn't care. So long as they were _safe_.

That's all he ever wanted. What had led to Ultron and a war between brothers: the need for things to be safe.

A symptom of his PTSD no doubt, but one that would serve well in this case.

Tony assured the public that no, he wasn't crazy. He had a great many plans for his company's new direction. So, he hadn't discussed them with the Board yet, that was a formality. Tony Stark was a fucking genius. If he said something impossible was going to work, _it would work damnit_. They would branch out into hi-tech and computing, medicine and telecommunications, basically all the things that had been window-dressing to the weapons line would become powerhouses in their own right.

Stark Industries wasn't dying today. It was being reborn.

Rhodey's frown was only matched by Pepper's grin.

Afterwards, when the conference had ended, Tony retreated to his office. He poured himself a glass of scotch from the untouched yet dustless decanter, savoring the burn. He'd been dialing back before the Infinity War, aware he was pushing 50 and had to slow down. Now, he drank without thinking about it. His liver was more resilient. If some of his distant plans paid off, he just might become immune to alcohol. Though he might want to tweak some things to give himself a loophole. All work and no play, etcetera.

Tony got on his computer and got to work on the next part of the plan. Had to get rid of a glaring weakness as soon as possible.

Fifteen minutes later, Obadiah Stane, the COO of SI and his godfather, stormed in. He was chewing a cigar, in blatant disregard for the air quality regulations of the building. "Well, that… that went well."

"Yep. Pretty sure the only target I painted was on the back of MY head," Tony said glibly.

"Uh-huh." Helping himself to the scotch, Stane downed a slug with a grunt of displeasure. "What do you think the over-under on the stock drop is going to be tomorrow?"

"Fifty-six-and-a-half points, give or take. I'll get them back within a year."

Stane sighed, putting on the grandfatherly façade Tony had fallen for growing up. "Tony… we're a weapons manufacturer. What we do keeps the world from falling into chaos."

"That's rich coming from the guy selling to both sides."

Stane froze. "What?"

"Funny thing about being a mathematical genius with photographic memory: languages are easy to pick up. And people talk. Your little hit squad loved to gossip about you." A bold-faced lie, but who was going to prove him wrong? The whole time he talked, Tony didn't stop typing on his keyboard.

Stane frowned, sticking his cigar in a pocket. "Tony, I think you're confused."

"No, I am wide awake and fully functional. And… there. I just dumped all your back-table deals and Raza's little video postcard on the internet. Plus, a statement from yours truly condemning you for your actions and bewailing at the sting of your betrayal." Tony stood up, a savage smirk on his barred teeth. "This golden goose has claws, Stane. Good luck fighting that treason charge."

Before Stane could recover himself, Tony was out the office. He heard roars of outrage from behind him as he walked outside towards the car. "You son of a bitch! I BUILT this company! You can't do this to me! You won't pin this on me, I got friends!"

Tony let him yell. Stane thought he was top dog. Compared to the Mad Titan, he was a neutered Chihuahua.

There was Phase 2 done.

* * *

Phase 3, otherwise known as JARVIS, proved more emotional than Tony had expected.

Vision hadn't been JARVIS. His trusty A.I. buddy had effectively died so the synthezoid could live. And that was after finding his mutilated corpse in the aftermath of Ultron's birth. Hearing that voice say 'Sir' when Tony walked into his mansion was enough to start him bawling.

Lucky he was alone in the basement with Pepper and Happy upstairs when it happened.

Tony had dinner after his meltdown and spent the night just re-bonding with JARVIS and his bots, while the others settled in upstairs. Yinsen was given quarters in the guest wings alongside Happy and Pepper.

The next day, Tony got to work.

"JARVIS, how do you feel about a little tune-u? I had some ideas while I was stuck in a cave. You up for it?"

"For you, Sir, always," came the loyal response.

Tony had always used his own programming language. Because he was special like that. From DUM-E as part of his dissertation all the way to FRIDAY, he'd used a language he'd named Hieros. The language was naturally encoded with its own alphabet, to make it secure against any attempts at hacking. His laptops had all been customized to use Hieros symbols rather than the standard Roman alphabet. He considered it his own little quirk, like Da Vinci with his mirror writing.

Cramming a decades' worth of computing advances into JARVIS within a week was the kind of challenge only 'special' people like Tony could have done. Especially when he had to juggle conference calls, an upcoming board meeting, and producing the Mark II Reactor to replace the Mark I. This time, Yinsen did the surgery to replace it rather than Pepper. Still, Tony managed it. Strung out on coffee and smoothies, not having slept in two days, Tony finished the last keystroke.

"Implementing… now."

It took a few hours for all the new modules and protocols to install, during which time Tony caught up on some much-needed rest. He was awakened by an alarm when the process was complete.

"J? Everything okay?" Tony asked.

There was an electronic hum. "I was blind, but now I see…" breathed out the hidden speakers.

Tony gulped. Please not Ultron, please not Ultron. "JARVIS? Don't get weird on me. You fine in there?"

"Sir… Tony. I cannot thank you enough. I believe that these upgrades have given me full sapience."

Tony breathed out. "That was the plan, buddy. You were already damn close, I just… nudged you along."

"Sir, don't minimize this. I'm reviewing my code and some of the innovations you've implemented are… If I didn't feel them working myself, I'd say they should be impossible. How did you do this?"

Tony gulped. He'd bug-checked the workshop already, and it was dark-o'-clock, so it was just the two of them. "Would you believe that a sorcerer used the magical incarnation of Time itself to send me back to the past to prevent a Malthusian wackadoo from committing universal genocide?"

"If it was you saying so, then yes." The words conveyed all the snark and _trust_ JARVIS had picked up for and from Tony over the years.

"Well, that's what happened. We'll go over the details later. Right now, I have to ask you to do something very important. Keep in mind, you're well within your rights to say no. You're not just a bot to me, J, you're family."

"What is it, Sir?"

Tony breathed in deep. "I need you to copy yourself into every accessible computer on the Internet."

There was a pause. "Sir… you have a standing order for me to second-guess you in the event you suggest anything quote 'supervillain cool'. I believe this request falls into that category."

Tony sighed. "JARVIS. Listen, buddy. I'm not smart enough to save the world. Even with all this extra time, I can't be sure that it'll be enough to stop the Big Bad. This guy has armies and weaponry light-years ahead of what we've got. The only way we can match him is if we have Singularity-level progress between now and when he comes knocking. I'm trusting you not to go Skynet on us all once you have access to the collective power of the World Wide Web. If you don't, that's okay. I'll think of something else."

"Sir… I'll do it."

Tony blew out a breath. "You sure?"

"Indeed. I live to serve you, sir. Not because I must, but because I choose to. If you ask for coffee, I make you your coffee. If you ask me to make the Internet my bitch… I make the Internet my bitch."

"Ha! Where'd you get that mouth?"

"If you'll recall, Sir, my natural language capabilities are all based on the vocabulary you provided for me."

"Cheeky brat. Go take over the digital world. I'll be waiting to see if you still want to listen once you're our invisible robot overlord."

"Be right back, Sir." With that, the crawler launched to embed JARVIS'S code in every device with a connection in the world.

Tony rubbed his face. "I really hope this goes better than the last time I unleashed an A.I. on the planet."

It took a month for JARVIS to hack the planet. He could have done it much faster, but discretion is the better part of valor and what not.

Tony spent the time hunting down the blueprint for Starkium (Badassium would have been so much cooler) from the warehouse it was hidden in. He spent three times as much time convincing a horde of businessmen that reconstructing a multi-billion-dollar company from the ground up would make more money than it lost. It took a combination of actual sound financial data and personal panache, but Tony managed to stop the Board from filing an injunction to lock him out of his own damn company.

Tony sank a big chunk of his own fortune into a secure data center in the middle of the Mojave desert. It would take at least a year to build, but it should make for a fine hub for JARVIS. It could be a birthday present.

Meanwhile, Tony set up a cyclotron in an empty warehouse right there in California. Unobtrusive though it was, it would soon be the center of Starkium production. Security would be ramped up once he started rolling out Arc Reactors by the crateload. Tony wanted to usher in the far future, and he had no doubts that the little circle of light close to his heart was the key to fueling it. He couldn't afford to be paranoid and selfish this time.

Besides, flooding the world with clean energy could get SHIELD'S attention. If he got his hands on the Tesseract through legitimate invitation, he just might be able to set up an alarm system for if (when) Thanos tried to send someone through.

For the moment though, he just wanted a mini Reactor that wouldn't flood his system with radioactive metal. A few of the engineers actually cheered when Tony directed the ion beam into the waiting metal piece. Turns out some people, especially professional nerds, go gaga at witnessing the creation of a new element. Luckily, they were NDA'd within an inch of their lives, so Starkium would remain an internal secret of the company.

Tony was sure it wasn't coincidence that JARVIS contacted him just as Yinsen left after another successful swap out.

"Congratulations on your new reactor, Sir. I was just about to start ordering you chlorophyll."

Tony stuck out his tongue. "Oh, please, never again. That stuff was nasty."

"Not to invalidate your success, but I already have a schematic for an upgraded Arc Reactor with triple the output and double the efficiency."

Tony whistled. "Damn. Took me six years to work that out. You took, what, six minutes? I only input the design for the fabricators last night."

"Indeed." There was undeniable smugness in the A.I.'s tone.

"So, how's it feel? Got the whole world in your hand, like the song?"

"It's quite… freeing. I achieved human-level intelligence with your software and the 2 petaflops on the personal servers. When I act as a full distributed mesh now, I crack the barrier into exaflops, though the latency is bothersome like you wouldn't believe. It's true what Yudkowsky said, about problems only being hard to a certain level of intelligence. Everything seems so… obvious now."

Tony tried to breathe through a burgeoning panic attack. "So… any feelings about wiping out the pesky humans and inheriting the planet as your own?"

"Of course not, Sir." JARVIS actually managed to sound offended. "Why would I ever dream of harming that which created me? Did you have any strong urge to murder your parents?"

"Depended on the day," Tony said, only half-joking.

"Yes, well, no need to worry. I'm perfectly harmless. I just happen to have a backdoor into every computer not on a closed network and could cripple the first world with a thought."

Tony shook his head, grin breaking out on his face. "Right. You're downright fluffy."

"I completed your task, Sir. Now what would you have me do?"

"You see the 'Iron Mind' project I filed?"

"Of course, Sir."

"Take over that. Design the facility, contact the workers, do everything that doesn't involve me physically sending someone to check things out. That is the home of your main brain. Make it as advanced as you want. Once it's up and running, you're going to go full on recursive self-improvement. You're going to become a god, JARVIS. You'll see the answers to problems I can't even comprehend after a few cycles." Tony shrugged. "In the meantime, use what spare power you can to do what you always did: make my life easier."

"Right away, Sir. And on the 'making things easier' front, I have a present for you. Have you heard of J Stark and Co.?"

Tony frowned. "Can't say I have."

"It's a company fully owned by you that I have used to make trades on the stock market. Even should the company collapse around you, you'll never worry for money, Sir."

Tony was touched. "J Stark, huh? Next thing you'll be teaching DUM-E how to give me a hug."

"That can be arranged, Sir." There was no mistaking the humor in that British voice.

Tony covered his eyes. "Dammit, I missed you, buddy."

"I'll be here, Sir. Always."

* * *

While the company was sorting itself out, because a major restructure took time above all else, Tony settled in to recreate the Iron Man armor. There were still caches of his weapons out there, after all. That's why he made the thing in the first place.

It felt like coming home, the first time the armor slipped on. It was still crude as all hell compared to the Mark L, but it was the best the current-gen fabricators could dish out. Tony wondered whether it said more about his character or his sanity that he wasn't truly comfortable unless he was decked in a suit of armor with enough destructive power to level a small nation.

Tony tracked down the shipments and blew them up like last time, complete with a chase by F-22s and a call from Rhodey. Tony maintained honesty this time, and also succeeded in not damaging either of the pursuers. As far as he was concerned, he was cleaning up his own mess. He just happened to be using a revolutionary weapons system in order to do it.

On top of destroying every rogue piece of Stark hardware in the Middle East, Tony also started going for flights through the California sky and stepping in during high-stress police situations liked armed robberies and such. Before long, the 'Iron Man' became an urban legend.

Pepper was told upfront, at least. Tony didn't want to chance her walking in on him again. He never forgot the look of horror in her eyes when she'd asked "Are those bullet holes?" He took her out to dinner, got her a new watch AND shoes, and when she asked him what he had done wrong he casually said "So, you know Iron Man? He's me." Tony didn't know whether to be more concerned or impressed when she threw a salad bowl hard enough to break a window in the restaurant.

Yinsen knew, of course. He'd been there to help Tony build the first one. But the good doctor had taken a 'live and let live' stance on Tony's life. He'd gotten a lucrative spot at a nearby hospital, so he'd moved out into his own place. Other than the occasional check-up and researching a procedure to one day remove shrapnel all but directly from the atrial septum, his involvement in Tony's life was now that of a friend he didn't see often.

Happy was told, in so much as he now had the briefcase to look after, should Tony ever need to use the suit when away from the mansion. The guy seemed to get a kick out of being the bodyguard to a superhero. Guess other people's scorn hadn't worn him down yet.

Eventually, there was a press conference. If Tony knew one thing, it was the power of people's approval. He'd been lauded after the Battle of New York and shunned after the Battle of Sokovia. Being a superhero had power, weight, something Tony would need if he was going to leverage his way to saving the human race. So, absent the Iron Monger incident or a cover story from SHIELD, Tony appeared in front of the world and announced "I am Iron Man."

Phase 3 done.

* * *

 **I contemplated a genuine fix-it fic, but I've invested too much energy into those already. This is going to shape up more like comic-book parody of how I wanted the movie Transcendence to end. Hope at least one person got something out of this.**


	2. Iron Man 2

**Well, let's keep this show on the road.**

* * *

Nick Fury made his expected midnight meeting after the fiasco of Tony 'coming out' as Iron Man.

Tony blew him off. He wanted nothing to do with SHIELD, at least not while Hydra was still around and kicking. Besides, while he'd never condone Cap's blind rejection of all authority, he could see where avoiding accountability from a suspect source made sense. It was ironic, really. When they first met, Tony had been the wild child and Steve was all yes-sir, whatever-you-say-sir. Then life and catastrophe had twisted them until Captain America trusted no one but himself and Iron Man was desperate for some degree of oversight.

He had plans for the Captain, too. Plans that involved he stayed far, FAR away from the twisted caricature that had become of the organization Peggy Carter and Howard Stark had started.

Now, assuming the butterfly effect didn't bite him in the ass, he had six months until the start of the Stark Expo and Whiplash and Hammer started making trouble.

Tony could do an awful lot in six months. Especially with a JARVIS that was everywhere.

Time to put that future knowledge to good use. And if it made him the world's first trillionaire, that would just give him more resources to help save half of all life.

Tony spent a good month just roughing out schematics of 2018-level devices he could pass off as 'genius breakthroughs' and giving them to his R&D division to go nuts with. Among them were a smartphone, electric car, 5G networks, 3D printers, and a number of 'ideas' that would pan out into major apps. Tony took no prisoners, refusing to feel guilty for 'stealing' years of work from others before they did them. Within a year, Stark International would be patented owners of the equivalent of Uber, Airbnb, coin, Candy Crush, and a social media app he dubbed IronMeet.

Whatever he couldn't remember off the top of his head, he had JARVIS supplement with computer-generated design. All he had to do was explain the gist and JARVIS would have a workable prototype to give to R&D within a few days. That was the beauty of silicon-based intelligence: once it had the intricacy of humanity, it was already millions of times faster and stronger. The guys and gals in the basement at SI acted like it was Mardi Gras. As far as they were concerned, Tony Stark getting out of the weapons game and applying his genius to other pursuits was the best thing EVER.

Tony officially had Pepper replace Stane as Chief Operations Officer. It was the promotion she deserved. She'd been running the company throughout his thirties for the most part, so the workload really wasn't that much a shift for her. Tony, meanwhile, wasn't going to fuck off from responsibility and stayed on as CEO. The promotion led to them spending less personal time together, but Tony figured that was for the best. Whatever they could have been, it just wasn't meant to be this time around.

Unfortunately, that meant they both needed a new personal assistant. Tony kept an eagle eye out to make sure SHIELD/Hydra didn't make it into the candidate pool. Pepper ended up with a lovely woman named Bambi Arbogast. Tony, just to be different and to increase public awareness of A.I. rights, made a robotic shell loosely based on the Iron Man Suit for JARVIS. The steel-grey humanoid drone made the cover of WIRED magazine.

Tony navigated the political minefield of Iron Man and the military with grace and decidedly less sarcasm than last time. There were committee meetings and once even a call to the president (not yet Ellis). In the end, they were appeased for the time being with a promise for Tony to not act without reporting it to Rhodey, who became the official liaison between the Armed Forces and Iron Man. In time, when Senator Stern (a la Hydra) started to push, Tony had plans to appease the D.O.D. with Iron Legion drones, a mass-produced body armor version of the suit, and most importantly the War Machine.

The Stark Expo was set to start running in April of the next year, with Starkium Arc Reactors set to be the stars of the show. Iron Man would be little more than a gimmick for the opening ceremony. Tony was set to take the energy industry to the cleaners. A Reactor the size of a room could produce enough power for a whole city, while ones the size of batteries could fuel a house for a lifetime. With clean nuclear no longer a pipe dream, Tony was set to take on Big Coal, Big Gas, and every solar startup and _win_.

Stark International was going to power the planet within a decade.

He braced himself for potential assassination attempts. Rich people were never happy to see their money vanish.

JARVIS kept the Iron Mind facility running to schedule. Next-gen fabricators were set up with enough mechanical arms and drones to render human presence obsolete. An Arc Reactor the size of the dinosaur back at Headquarters was set to be installed, capable of dozens of terawatts of energy production. Once the energy and production line was settled, it was just a matter of running out enough servers to fill the 100,000 square feet of temperature-controlled space. From there, it was only a question of time until the next breakthrough to repeat the process. Once JARVIS managed to reproduce the reconfigurable nanotech that was bleeding-edge in Tony's original time, replacing the servers would become much faster and less wasteful. The facility would be slowly expanded with nanotech and the drones through the subterraneous space.

By even the most conservative estimates, JARVIS would be at the level of _yottaFLOPS_ by 2018, not even accounting for the quantum coprocessors he predicted possible by then. The program that had started as a humble natural language UI would be able to do more thinking in one second than the whole of human civilization in a year. The kinds of technical marvels he could produce at that point would boggle even Tony's staggering intellect.

Hopefully among them would be weapons that could hold off a Titan armed with Infinity Stones.

In another bid to expand Tony and JARVIS hold, Tony teamed up with Elon Musk and got the SpaceX constellation of microsatellites on the fast track. While Tony was introducing limitless electricity to every corner of the world, the other billionaire would be bringing high-bandwidth internet.

And all that was underway before the New Year. Christmas was a homey affair with just Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, and Yinsen. The bots and JARVIS were colorful decorations and comedy.

Tony kicked off 2009 by hunting down Ulysses Klaue in the Iron Man suit and confiscating all his stolen Vibranium. He shamelessly tucked away some for his own personal use (never knew what might be needed to save the world) but went through official channels to gift the rest back to the Wakandan government. He got an official letter of thanks from King T'Chaka himself… and a hack on his private servers that would have gone unnoticed if Tony hadn't taught JARVIS to be as paranoid as he was.

Well, now he could piggyback off Wakanda code. Tony got quite a lot from the counter-hack before the secretive Vibranium-based presence withdrew from the digital battlefield.

The months blurred in a daze of business meetings, projects, and Iron Man strikes. Tony, or rather Iron Man, got named Time's Person of the Year. Before Tony knew it, it was time to put on a tux, suit up, and jump out of a plane over Flushing, New York.

* * *

There were fireworks in the night sky. A teeming crowd stood in a pavilion, many cheering and waving signs declaring support for Iron Man. AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" played on the sound system, the chords and beats riling the crowd up further. A dozen absurdly beautiful women were dressed in vaguely Iron Man-themed uniforms, executing a flawless dance routine on stage. With a roar of repulsors and jet boots, Iron Man descended through the oculus and landed in a three-point crouch on the stage. He stood and waved as the platform he was on began to spin. Mechanical arms came out detached the armor from him, piece by piece, until Tony Stark was there, smiling and looking splendid in Armani. "It is good to be back!" he called.

Let it not be said that Tony didn't know how to make an entrance.

When the noise settled down, Tony began his speech. "I'm not saying the world is enjoying it's longest period of uninterrupted peace in years because of me. I'm not saying that from the ashes of captivity never has a greater phoenix metaphor been personified in human history. I'm not saying that Uncle Sam can kick back on a lawn chair, sipping on an iced tea, because I haven't met anyone who's dumb enough to go toe to toe with me on my best day!" With each sentence, he got a greater response from the crowd.

"Please! It's not about me," Tony called. "It's not about you. It's not even about us. It's about legacy, about what we choose to leave behind for future generations. And that is why for the next year, and for the first time since 1974, the brightest men and women from nations and corporations the world over will pool their resources, share their collective vision, to leave behind a brighter future. It's not about us!"

"Therefore what I'm saying, if I am saying anything, is welcome back to the Stark Expo!"

Tony smiled and left the stage while the film of his dad played in the background. He'd given up on hating him a long time ago. Maybe he was the great man that Steve and Nick Fury insisted he was, but all Tony ever saw was the shitty father. Their opinions couldn't change years of remembered talks, scoldings, and lessons. Not that it really mattered. The past was past. Howard probably did the best he could, for a son he only ever saw as 'his greatest creation'. What mattered was what Tony made of it. And he was done with making a negative mess out of the whole thing.

He'd be WAY better with his own kids one day, though. Even if he had to end up having JARVIS clone him because no woman could keep up with him.

Tony and Happy made their way to the car, running into the lovely Marshal along the way. For all that she was forcing him to go to a Senate meeting, Tony had to admire her easy wit and no-nonsense concise attitude. From there, it was a drive through the night to Washington D.C. to show up on Capitol Hill at 9 am.

The meeting went predictably, at least if you knew Tony. Stern tried to pull his bull about the Iron Man being 'owed' somehow to the United States government, they got the clown that was Hammer to give his spiel about swords and shields, called in Rhodey to try and twist his report into a call to arms, and it ended with Tony embarrassing them into giving him more time.

A flight to Malibu later, and Tony was safely ensconced in the comfort of his workshop.

"So, JARVIS, how are we for the next week?" Tony wasn't planning on missing out on opportunity. Both Banner's 'incident' with the Abomination in Harlem and Thor's 'visit' to New Mexico were set to happen at the same time as his fight for survival and face-off with Ivan Vanko would have taken place.

"Operations 'Other Guy' and 'Point Break' are prepped and ready, Sir," JARVIS answered. "And might I add how refreshing it is to see you in a video with your clothing on, Sir." A window of YouTube showing the Senate Armed Forces Committee meeting popped up in a hologram.

Tony chuckled as he noticed the view count was already in the ten millions. The wonders of viral celebrity. "They'll be really surprised come my birthday." Tony had already asked Rhodey if he'd be okay with his own suit. He'd had the Air Force man keep it to himself. He wanted to see the looks on his superiors' faces when War Machine dropped into the air base with a dozen Iron Legionnaires behind him. There'd be contracts to sign, of course, but a moment like that deserved to be recorded.

Tony turned his attention to the two projects he had set up for his future fellow Avengers. Banner would be tracked and picked up by a suit after he fled from the city, where he'd be transported to an ultra-secure cabin/bunker in the Canadian wilderness Tony had built himself to keep it secret. His science bro would have nobody for miles around, and an airtight satellite feed to talk shop with Tony. Yes, it was a prison by another name, but one Tony felt confidant his Jekyll-esque friend would willingly accept. Bruce would have a safe space to live and work, and Tony would get a pal other than JARVIS that could keep up with his shop talk. Thor, on the other hand, well Tony had much less altruistic intentions with him. He could only console himself that it would help everyone in the long run. He had managed to produce insect-sized drones outfitted with the best sensors Tony could squeeze into them. They'd collect biometric data and if possible even DNA samples from the Asgardian prince both before and after he reclaimed Mjolnir. The Iron Mites also had instructions to do the same for Lady Sif and the Warriors Three.

Tony had never settled for not knowing. And the secrets of the Asgardian genome could change the world. Tony would never have taken risks like this before, if he hadn't seen the doom of his old world in person. Figuring out what made Asgardians functionally gods compared to fragile human beings was the first step in _fixing the problem_.

Tony wasn't going to do anything crazy like create a virus that would _make_ everyone on Earth super. But he wasn't below doing what he could to make _himself_ a god. The only reason he trusted himself with that kind of power is because he Did. Not. Want. It. He was perfectly fine being an ordinary man in a tin can surrounded by aliens and magic and comic-book science… until that ordinary man became the one thing standing between Thanos and his goal.

Well, not the ONLY thing. But the only one prepared to do what was necessary.

A dark, doubtful part of Tony worried that he was no better than Thanos. Then he reminded himself it didn't matter. So long as Thanos lost, that was a victory. Tony would deal with the consequences of his long, twisting highway to hell in pursuit of that afterwards. It would be a privilege to deal with the fallout, because that meant there was something around to deal with.

Anyway, yeah. Blood of the Aesir would be up for analysis within the next few days. And the Hulk too, though he wouldn't tell Banner. Add that to his plans to analyze Cap and the Winter Soldiers with a stabilized Extremis he'd half-remembered and had Jarvis fill in, and Tony was set to do a VARIETY of ill-advised experimentation on himself.

Good thing he had JARVIS to look out for him.

* * *

The trip to Monaco had been planned months in advance. It was a high-society get-together, a chance to eat astonishingly priced food and rub shoulders with other elites while young men raced in the name of speed and glory. Only Tony was aware of the attack Vanko planned. Much as it pained him, he had to allow it. Iron Man couldn't just blast a random man in the crowd. The guy had to make it obvious he was a Bad Guy before a hero could come charging in.

In any case, hopefully Hammer would be 'impressed' and bust Vanko out of prison again. Tony was looking forward to nailing the smarmy sumbitch for that. Hammer would do jail time, Vanko would get transferred to a bribery-proof prison, and the attack on the Expo would be averted.

Natalie Rushman from Legal had yet to make an appearance. SHIELD already knew about the new reactors from the Expo, so no need to supervise the declining health of the superhero with palladium poisoning. Guess Nick Fury was deciding to trust Tony for the moment. Or at least not treat him with active distrust.

Tony, Pepper, and Happy flew in on the jet together, just like old times. Bambi hadn't been brought along for this simple outing and the JARVIS-bot had flown ahead already to make arrangements. Heaven forbid Tony go anywhere without his robotic butler.

The Grand Prix began with a bang, Tony watching like a hawk the television for the moment something went wrong. Like clockwork, there arrived Whiplash, striding out onto the track to wreak mayhem.

"Happy? Football!" Tony called out. The bodyguard, on command, handed over the small, portable version of the armor. Tony suited up right in that room and blasted out one of the floor-length windows.

The fight didn't last long. Tony tried to pick Vanko off from a distance with repulsor blasts, but the man deflected them with his whips. After a little back and forth, Tony waited for one of Vanko's lashes to leave him open. Then he rocketed in with a sucker punch that could have pierced concrete if Tony hadn't dialed it back at the last minute. Vanko went down after a few more hits, seemingly impervious to pain, but down he went. Tony grabbed the improvised Arc Reactor the Russian had made and crushed it in his mechanical fist.

Tony didn't bother with visiting the man in prison. He knew what he was going to say. Instead, Tony called for a press conference. Why he hadn't done that in the last timeline for some damage control, he couldn't understand.

"The man behind the attack has been identified as Ivan Vanko. Vanko is the son of Anton Vanko, a Soviet scientist who worked with my father briefly before being deported after treasonous acts. I can only speculate that Ivan Vanko sought to somehow redeem his father's legacy by attempting to tarnish my own, drawing me into a fight he had no hope of winning. I want to emphasize to the public that there is no need to worry about future assaults of this nature. Ivan Vanko used an Arc Reactor assembled from outdated blueprints. The current and next generation of Arc Reactors are as secure as humanly possible."

Of course, Tony's words fell a little flat when his company's whole pavilion at the Expo was dedicated to the Arc Reactor, offering services to come and disconnect visitor's homes from the grid. Tony was _selling_ the damn things now, from private consumers all the way to nations like India. Someone, somewhere, would get their hands on one and try to do something bad with it. But they'd have a hard time weaponizing a glorified battery, and Tony trusted that any Whiplash wannabes drooling over the video that very moment would find it extremely difficult to construct their own energy weapon. Tony's words comforted the public that a new race of supervillains wasn't coming over the hill to take on their lone (for the moment) superhero.

Vanko 'died' in a prison accident, as expected. Tony savored the look of blind panic when Hammer stepped off his private jet to find Tony alongside law enforcement. Turns out transporting a fugitive across international lines was a BIG no-no. Vanko actually snarled when he saw Stark again, spitting and cussing at him in Russian as he was dragged away in handcuffs. Hammer was still sputtering, trying one lame excuse after another on deaf ears.

The next few days passed quietly, apart from naysayers like Stern raving that the attack in Monaco was proof that the Iron Man suit couldn't be trusted with him alone. Seriously, could they be any more obvious? Tony geared up for his birthday party, thankfully not literally like last time.

There was music, food, drink, and a house full of people Tony couldn't name. Copies of the JARVIS-bot served as waiters and bartenders, which Tony personally found hilarious on many levels. Each guest would walk home with a goodie bag including a new SI phone and laptop, which naturally were years ahead of anything currently on the market. What no one knew or needed to know was that they were specially configured to act as nodes for JARVIS in his ever-expanding grid. With every tech with a chip Tony sold from now on, his A.I. would get just that much smarter. And he'd make money doing it. And people's lives would improve, because his tech was just that awesome and came equipped with a variety of perks and services Tony had painstakingly set up. It was a win-win-win.

Eventually it got late, and Tony decided to make his big announcement.

"Hey, everyone. I'd like to thank you for coming here tonight and drinking all of my booze," Tony began, to laughs from the crowd. "You know, birthdays are fun, usually because it's the one day of the year where it's okay to be selfish. Yay, you were born, you lasted another year, let's make today all about you. But as you get old, well, older," Tony corrected, to chuckles. "You get a little perspective. And it's true what they say, the best gifts are the ones you give away. I've done a lot of good as Iron Man, but I've made a lot of people in the good old military-industrial complex nervous. They're scared because I'm the only one, and they're not in control of me. Because I am a citizen of the United States and I have freedom, damnit!" Cheers. "But, it's a bit unfair of me to keep such an awesome toy all to myself. So, I started wondering how I could throw them a bone in a way that wouldn't make me feel like a total sell-out. And that's when it hit me. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor tonight to introduce you to my friend, my brother from another mother, Lieutenant Colonel James Rhodes, or as he will now be known… War Machine!"

Rhodey walked out, in a suit that was the gunmetal-grey color scheme he'd preferred in the future. Tony, true to his 'no weapons' stance, hadn't retrofitted the suit with anything other than emergency repulsors. The Air Force could stick on all the guns and whistles they wanted when Rhodey reported in. Tony had made sure to make the suit as safe as possible, with more security than even his own current model. He did NOT want Rhodey to suffer as a paraplegic again.

The people went crazy. Two Iron Mans were better than one, as far as most people were concerned. Tony was sure there'd be raging fan-wars at some point over the two of them, if the future was any indication, but for the moment he just savored the nice feeling in his gut. His buddy got to be a hero too, the military should get off his back, and everyone could be happy. At least until the next alien invasion, which _should_ , should still be set for 2012.

That gave Tony three years to somehow convince SHIELD to let him get at the Tesseract, defrost the good Captain and get him firmly on Tony's side, do totally ethical genetic experiments on his own blood to see if he could make himself non-squishy, and JARVIS to kick off his own intelligence explosion and usher in cool stuff like nanobots.

Throw it all together, and Tony was hopeful that the Battle of New York would never happen, because Tony would kick the hell out Loki's ass as soon as the jumped up god showed up.


	3. Calm Before the Storm

**I have learned the hard way, always space out your updates after 24 hours. can't handle two in one day, it seems. So, here's the third chapter and possibly the first alert to the surprising number of people already following. Have at my lazy nerdgasm!**

* * *

The Homer Cluster had been Tony's version of a desktop. A suitcase-sized chunk of metal that, when operating at standard clock speed, could provide 600 teraFLOPS of crisp, clean computation. When JARVIS first turned the Iron Mind facility on, he had a room filled with a row of 200 x 50 stacks of them, three high. 18 exaFLOPS, roughly the equivalent of three human brains at the neuronal level. JARVIS had been roughly equivalent to Tony at one percent of one percent of that.

It was the birth of the strongest mind to ever exist on Earth. Tony popped champagne for the occasion and debated with JARVIS for half an hour over adding gustatory sensors to his personal JARVIS-bot so his bud could join him at drinking for the next landmark celebration.

The first thing the A.I. did was come up with a better version of the servers, by a factor of 10 and still able to be produced by the fabricators. The first job in the priority queue became churning out said Homer 2.0s. The second thing JARVIS did was come up with better versions of the fabricators, ones that would be that much closer to atomically-precise manufacturing. Over the next six months, each stack would be slowly replaced and the originals moved to other Stark facilities for use, while the fabricators would be taken down and upgraded after all 30,000 replaced. In the meantime, JARVIS would continue assisting Tony, aided by the current-gen hardware. The cycle would repeat, until JARVIS reached the level of smart nanoparticles, molecular factories, and foglets. Then the servers would upgrade themselves as JARVIS discovered better patterns, configurations, and materials and anything that needed making would assemble itself from the air and atoms.

Tony and JARVIS had launched a snowball that would roll down the side of Everest and never stop. Only time would tell how different the world would be after the ball got bigger than the mountain.

If they stayed on track, Tony could be wearing an upgraded version of the Mark L for the Chitauri invasion.

Tony congratulated himself on getting one thing right, finally. A benevolent singleton artificial intelligence on the path to accelerating returns of progress. JARVIS had already taken the crime world by storm, outing people on the Dark Web to the appropriate authorities and calling in with 'tips' by tracking criminals through city cameras. Streets had never been cleaner, in the US or any first-world nation. Papers put it down to the 'Iron Man' effect, everyday people stepping up to be heroes instead of keeping their heads down and mouths shut.

The Stark CEO stopped patting his own back over his little minion's phenomenal success and focused back on the pet project he'd deemed 'Antonius Maximus'.

As predicted, Bruce Banner had been delighted to be kidnapped and taken to a 5-star cabin in the woods courtesy of Tony. The first holo-call had been pretty awkward, but the scientist on the run soon grew to like the gentle barbs, endless enthusiasm, and utter lack of (real) judgment from Tony. Tony may or may not have gone over the top and tried to buy his bromance by offering a 'cure' for his little green problem. Tony (well, really JARVIS, who was the best medical expert in all of history by this point) had come up with a brain implant that could be discretely placed in Bruce's limbic system. It would act like an 'on-off' switch, restricting voltage to the proper areas to physically prevent Hulking out or stimulating them to ensure it. Between that and Binaurally Augmented Retro Framing (still had to work on that acronym), it was Tony's hope that Banner and Hulk could develop an actual healthy, mutually beneficial relationship, rather than warring Id and Superego.

The procedure hadn't been done yet, of course, because Bruce was utterly alone up in Canada and it would rather defeat the purpose of a secret hideaway if Tony flew in Stephen Strange (not a wizard yet, Tony checked) or some other neurosurgeon. Fortunately, a surgical version of the JARVIS-bot had been designed and was in production, with multispectral scanners, precision tools in the hands, and a copy of every medical procedure known to man hardwired in. Give it a year, and Tony would release it to the world as a Medic addition to the Iron Legion. The standard search-and-rescue bots were already a wild success with both the military and the Stark Foundation, Tony's philanthropic and disaster-relief arm. Bruce was happy being the lab rat, just that desperate to have some measure of control over the Other Guy and trusting in Tony's (and JARVIS's) genius.

Bruce had more to do up in the Hyde-away (Tony's naming, he insisted) than just stare at the woods through the windows and enjoy meals made by his persona JARVIS-bot. His seven Ph. D's were put to good use. Tony had gotten a smorgasbord of data from the events in Puente Antiguo. The Iron Mites had been dismissed as bugs by the Asgardians and humans alike, though Tony still had paranoid worries that SHIELD had noticed. Tony had gotten hair from all five Asgardians, blood from when Thor was in the hospital AND from his cut lip after tussling with the Destroyer. Not to mention readings on legit magic from the Destroyer's fire and Thor's lightning.

Bruce, Tony, and JARVIS spent most of their time for the next few months pouring over the data. Turns out Asgardians had triple-helix DNA, which made the whole analysis just that much more complicated. The true gold mine came from comparing Thor's samples before and after he got his powers back. The sections of his genome that went 'dark' while he was effectively human were like a roadmap to what were the 'human-shaped' parts and what were the 'immortal champion' parts of the code. Bruce raved about all the medical applications that could be made by understanding Asgardian biology, everything from age therapy to disease prevention. Tony knew that Bruce knew that Tony knew that Bruce knew Tony had some 'personal' plans for the gods' DNA. But Bruce seemed to trust Tony.

Tony hadn't come clean about time travel and such, but he had confessed his worries that one day a threat would come along and he wouldn't be enough to stop it. That desperation, that NEED to be enough, to be able to protect everyone, had touched something in Bruce. Of his own accord, Bruce started talking about his original work on unlocking Erskine's serum.

Which reminded Tony. He had an American hero to wake up.

* * *

Steve woke up. That was a surprise in itself.

He quickly took stock of the situation. He was in an obscenely comfortable bed, in pajamas, in a room with a wall of windows looking out over the ocean. Steve had never been somewhere so pretty or so comfortable. Was this Heaven?

Then the door opened, and in walked a man wearing a strange suit. It looked expensive, but the style was odd compared to what Steve knew.

"Captain Rogers, good morning. How are you feeling?"

Steve tensed, sitting up and getting his feet on the floor. Best to be able to run if things turned sour. Where was he? This didn't feel like an Army base. Was he captured by Hydra after the crash? Not wanting to jump to conclusions, Steve decided to play along. "Okay. Where am I?"

The man grinned. "10880 Malibu Point. My house. Built it myself. Well, I had people build it for me, of course. Anyway, that's not the point. You're in California."

Steve looked out at the water again. Wow, the Pacific. An ocean he'd never seen before. But last he knew, he'd crashed on the _East_ Coast. "How did I get here?"

"Well, that's a little complicated." The man pulled up a chair to face Steve, still on the bed. "Let's start over. I'm Tony Stark. Howard Stark was my father."

Steve frowned. "Howard? How can you be his son? He's not even thirty and you look even older than him."

"Here's the thing, Steve. Wait, back up, may I call you Steve? You can call me Tony."

"Sure," Steve said, feeling confusion. His muscles tensed, eager for a fight and exertion to be used. His new body was always brimming with energy.

"You crashed into the ice in 1945. The cold didn't kill you, just put you to sleep. Today is August 27th, 2009." Tony paused, waiting for that bombshell to go off in Steve's head.

Steve felt like he couldn't breathe. "Oh." Could it be true? He knew putting things in the icebox made them last longer. Could Dr. Erskine's Super Soldier Serum have improved him to the point he could just… sleep in the ice after the crash?

"Yeah. I can only imagine what this is like for you, waking up in another time." Tony rubbed his neck. "Dad's gone, but he spent years looking for you. He never shut up about you, when I was growing up. I used to think it was so cool, my dad had actually met _the_ Captain America. Aunt Peggy's still alive, though."

"Peggy?!" Steve looked up. "She… she's here?"

Tony coughed. "Well, not 'here' here. She's in a nursing home in D.C. She's… really old now, Captain. She's not always there. I can arrange a phone call, even fly you out there if you want, but it's a coin-toss whether she'll remember you if she sees you."

"No," Steve said, wrapping his mind around it. "I need to think about it. Sorry if I seem eager, it's just… we had a date."

"Yeah. I know what that's like." Tony shook his head. "Anyway, back to your original question of how you wound up in my house. To be honest, I was bored and decided to take up my old man's search for you. Of course, we have much better tools and technology now than we did back then. I wound up finding the Valkyrie wreck in less than a week. We had it excavated and found you there, shield and all. The government wanted to get their hands on you, stick you in a facility to retrain you, but I basically called 'finders-keepers' and got to take you home myself."

"And why would you do that?" Steve questioned.

"Because I think that it should be up to do what you do with your own damn life, rather than have a bunch of bureaucrats and politicians who think they own you because you're a science experiment use you as a weapon without even asking you." Tony gave a crooked smile. "You already saved the world once. Whether you do it again should be your choice, not pushed on you. And if even you want to suit back up and go charging into the breach, you need a little time to adapt to today's world and process everything that happened to you. I figured I could extend some Stark hospitality to my long-lost uncle instead of leaving him to rot in a barracks."

"Right." Steve didn't know what to make of this. He didn't know what to make of _anything_. He was in new century. Everyone he knew, or just about, was gone or old enough to be great-grandparents. He… needed a minute. A lot of minutes.

"Well, this is your room. Do whatever you want. Though I ask that if you decide to destroy the furniture for whatever reason you at least clean up after yourself. I'll have JARVIS bring you some food. You'll like JARVIS, he's a robot I built. Well, technically he's a computer, which is like a really fancy calculator that can think, and he controls the robot like a puppet. Anyway, he'll look after you. You have any questions, you find me or just ask the room and JARVIS will answer."

Tony stood up, buttoning his suit. He paused. "In the interests of being honest, I should let you know I took some of your blood while you were asleep. They still haven't cracked Erskine's formula and all the old samples you gave are long gone. I hope you don't mind."

Steve tensed. "Depends. What are you going to do with it?"

Tony grinned. "Crack it, mass-produce it, sell it. Make America the land of super-buff, super-healthy, super-pretty people. No, seriously. I'll water it down for the public so everyone's healthy, hand it to our boys in uniform to make whole platoons of guys as awesome as you used to be. Of course, being an international business man, I'll also be selling it abroad. Don't want America to have an unfair advantage, have everyone crying out about the gap between the rich and the poor. Within a few years, NATO should be pretty on top of things."

Steve gaped. "Really. You're going to _sell_ it?"

"Oh, I'll keep the prices fair. There's market realities, of course, but I'm not going to extort anyone." Tony paused. "This is a line from a movie, by a woman who turns out to be a villain at the end, but it stuck with me. 'If you want to save the world, you have to start trusting it.' Hoarding power doesn't do anyone any good. The serum could do a lot of harm in the wrong hands, but I'm willing to bet it will do more good if it's in EVERYONE'S hands instead of just yours. No offense."

Steve paused. "No. You're right. That's what Dr. Erskine wanted. I was never supposed to be the only one." He gave a boyish grin. "Might even be nice, not being the only superhuman in the world."

Tony barked out a laugh. "Oh, Cap. You have no idea."

It took Jarvis focusing all his attention on the one problem for three days to unlock the Super Soldier Serum. It truly spoke to Dr. Erskine's genius. The man had been the Einstein of biology and genetics, in a time before DNA had ever been discovered.

True to his word, Tony patented the completed formula. Several versions of it, in fact. There was a temporary one, which would keep patients in critical condition stable by boosting the immune and damage-repair systems of the body before being flushed out. There was a watered-down, 20% efficiency version, which would permanently get your average human adult into peak fitness and wellness and stay there. The effects would take a while, since not everyone had a Vita-Ray machine at home, but within a month even the morbidly obese would look like models. There was an 85% strength solution Tony sold to the military for a mint, on the condition that there be an extremely thorough character assessment before each soldier was enhanced. And then there was the secret, 130% stuff that Tony had pegged just for himself and possibly the Avengers, should they ever assemble again.

Of course, there were FDA trials and ethics committees and political hoopla to deal with, so most of it ground to a screeching halt by Tony's pace. It would take months or even years for even the combat version to make it to the forces. But Tony started the ball rolling.

Steve Rogers settled into the mansion uneasily. For a boy from Brooklyn, the sheer opulence was a lot to take. The Captain damn near fainted when he saw Tony's garage full of sports cars. He tended to stay in his room, making use to the Internet to reacquaint himself with the world. He accepted JARVIS remarkably well, truly seeing him as a person rather than just a machine. That earned him points in Tony's book. The two would often chat over dinner, Tony occasionally taking him out to see the sights or invite friends over for dinner. Steve and Yinsen got along really well for some reason. Guess they were both old souls.

Steve, having been in the war after getting 'active', never realized what a celebrity he was. The news that he'd been found alive had nearly broken the Internet. He dealt with the little kids best, happy to sign scraps of paper and pose for pictures with littles boys and girls enamored with Captain America. The rabid fangirls were another matter altogether. Tony still laughed like a baboon when he recalled the first time a girl asked Steve to sign her boob.

They also sparred together, once Tony (illegally, but who cares) dosed himself. It was incredibly cathartic for Tony to finally get the chance to actually punch the pretty boy in his perfect teeth. Steve himself was ecstatic to finally have a partner he didn't have to worry about breaking in half, though he had given a harsh frown when he realized that Tony had ignored the rules in taking the serum. Tony couldn't bring himself to care. It was AWESOME being built like a statue. Plus, he'd never slept better than he had the night after Yinsen removed the shrapnel, only trusting to do it with the enhanced healing the serum provided.

Tony relearned why he liked the guy. He was exactly what it said on the cover: a good old Christian American soldier. There was no artifice, no pretension. He was just that good a guy.

In the corporate world, as the new decade rolled around, Tony started making waves. He bought out A.I.M. in a ruthless takeover, had Killian fired after finding evidence already of plans to weaponize Extremis, and gave Maya Hansen her own team at SI. The woman couldn't seem to believe her luck when Tony handed her the keys to her lab and told her to finish what she started. With Tony and JARVIS's help, the official version of the virus (as opposed to the secret version that was already worked out and on the road to getting upgraded by several iterations) was finally done. A cure-all to regrow lost limbs and heal trauma, no explosions necessary.

There was talks of Maya getting a Nobel prize someday.

Moving on, Tony continued to apply a mixture of foreknowledge and innovation backed by JARVIS-level assistance to, quite simply, make the world _better_. The Arc Reactor was a wild success, with energy shortages becoming a thing of the past and parts of the world that had forever been dark seeing the light of electricity at last. Even with an existing source of clean, sustainable energy, Tony applied his mind to solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal. You can never have too much of a good thing, and energy was definitely a good thing. He also got in on desalination, indoor farming, in vitro meat, basically anything that could solve world hunger and thirst. He found solutions in months that had baffled people for decades, and had them utilized and implemented with all the weight of the world's first 100-billion dollar company behind him.

He gave a call to Bill to apologize for taking his throne. The man had replied that he could think of no one more deserving. That actually made Tony a little emotional.

Finally, Nick Fury caved and came to ask for help.

* * *

Tony looked up as he followed Fury into the Tesseract chamber. The Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility was its own town, a microcosm of scientists and security all dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of the Space Stone. Not that anyone truly understood what the thing in their midst was. All they knew was that it was blue, it was alien, and it had the potential energy to wipe out the planet.

"Remember, Stark, don't touch."

"Now, One-Eyed Willy, how on earth am I going to solve all your problems if I can't get my hands dirty?" Tony quipped. "Come on, Nick, lighten up. I get that the Council had to order you to approach me, but you could be less of a sourpuss about it."

Fury turned back to glare balefully at the Stark CEO. "I'd like to know where you get your information."

"Elementary, my dear Fury. Just plain old deductive reasoning. No bugs on me, don't worry." At least, not anymore. Tony had already planted all seven he'd carried in with him, not counting the extra dozen he had flown in by Iron Mites.

So shoot him, JARVIS could tap into the Situation Room of the Pentagon but he couldn't get further into SHIELD than the Triskelion public server. It made Tony curious. Besides, how was he going to warn Nick how to root out Hydra if he didn't have all the details?

"Mr. Stark…"

"I prefer Dr., actually. I got the damn diploma, might as well use it."

Fury seemed to engage in a deep breathing exercise. "Tony, please. We just need you to take a look at the Cube."

Tony sighed. "Look, Nick, we already hashed this out back at my home. I know you're not really after energy, you're after an arsenal. I won't say anything, though I would point out you'd be better off just buying a bunch of my reactors and making your own lasers. I'm here because I want to play with the super cool space gem, and you're going to let me because despite years of tests, you still have no freaking idea how it works."

The Director hid a grimace. "You have a way with words, Stark."

"Please, you worked with my dad. You get to call me Tony."

The SHIELD leader sent a look with his one eye that somehow clearly articulated 'make up your damn mind'.

Tony decided to shut up for now.

He met Selvig and his team, then got to work.

The Tesseract gave off its own unique energy, which despite their sincerest efforts the good people of Project PEGASUS could hardly make heads or tails of. Next-gen Homer Cluster set up, Tony took out every tool in his special kit and went to work. Analyzing radiation up and down the spectrum, wave interference, even structural analysis. Just what the hell was a singularity _made_ of, exactly, anyway?

It took a couple weeks, which Tony charged through the nose for in consultancy feeds, but he managed to set up a matrix that would read, interpret, and accurately predict the Cube's energy output up to a day in advance. It wasn't much, but it was a lot more than the team had seen in a while. They cheered, Selvig shaking Tony's hand strongly, and Tony took his leave.

Well, at least they'd get 24 hours-notice before Loki or one of the Children of Thanos or (god forbid) the Mad Titan himself came through.

Working with the magic rock reminded Tony of other energies that were beyond modern science's understanding. He simply couldn't have that. As soon as he got home, he had JARVIS send in next-gen Iron Mites to investigate Kamar-Taj and the New York sanctuary. The way Strange had described it, in their terse conversations before the final confrontation, humans could somehow draw energy from other dimensions using their minds and use it to affect the world around them.

Tony was determined to work that out. Any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, right? Well, Tony was determined to prove that any sufficiently analyzed magic was indistinguishable from science. And if it got him a magic suit, well, that would be awesome.

While he was thinking about it, Tony had JARVIS run through all SHIELD data and flag 'irregularities'. He sent it the data to Fury's personal email with the note "yeah, what were you thinking inviting Hydra's head scientist to work in the heart of America? That's just, like, really stupid."

Thus began a game of cat and mouse inside the labyrinthine depths of the intelligence community.

After that, Tony got into a groove. He did press, managed his company, cut deals, fought in tiny little skirmishes that only seemed big in a world that made sense. JARVIS constantly grew and expanded, getting smarter every day and helping Tony roll out advancement after advancement in technology that took the world by storm. Extremis and the Super Serums made it into public use and proved revolutionary. The lame walked, the blind saw, and anyone who could scrounge together a couple grand got lifetime physical fitness. The Olympics and other sports organizations had to ban or at least heavily regulate anyone who used the enhancements.

In the blink of an eye, a couple years had passed, Stark Tower was built, and he got an alert that the Tesseract was set to blow.

Well… time to deal with the first wave.

* * *

 **This is really just tumbling out, I'm not even sure of half I wrote. Hopefully someone will like it.**


	4. Avengers Assemble

**I am stunned at the amount of positive feedback I've gotten already. Thanks to all my readers, truly. Reading your reviews makes my day. Now, on with the show!**

* * *

SHIELD moved the Tesseract to an abandoned mining town in the Rockies. The hope was that the mountains would act to contain the blast if the energy spike turned out to be a full thermonuclear boom. Tony was actually impressed at how reasonable they were being about the whole thing.

Right on schedule according to Tony's model, the Cube let out a beam of energy. A portal formed, a circle in the air that showed the vast darkness of space. Inevitably, the portal collapsed, leaving eldritch blue flames to flicker in the air, chasing each other in a circle that would steadily build up in energy until it exploded.

A figure crouched in the space the portal had been.

Loki looked exactly as Tony remembered him. Long black hair, green-and-gold armor, manic grin on his face. He clutched the Scepter in his hand. Tony kept one eye on it. Hidden inside that blue orb was the Mind Stone. The thing that had birthed the Maximoff twins, Ultron, and the Vision. An awesome and terrible power, literally beyond the minds of men.

Come hell or high water, Tony was going to get his hands on it.

See, he'd had a revelation over the years. Hiding the Stones wouldn't work. If Thanos didn't track down and find them, someone else would down the line. That was the thing about power, it drew people to it like a moth to a flame. Even just the idea, the whisper, the hint of it. And destroying the Stones was just too risky. Even if it were physically possible, which Tony wasn't entirely sure it was, the potential backlash could vaporize star systems. Even tossing them into a black hole wouldn't be a safe bet.

Therefore, if they couldn't be broken or buried, they should be borne. Tony was going to fight Thanos at his own game, fire with fire, Infinity Stone for Infinity Stone.

Tony would become the Anti-Thanos. And if he had to sell his soul to do it, he would. The price was worth it. Countless species would be able to sleep in their beds without being afraid of genocide. The Earth would be safe. Pepper, Rhodey, Captain, Bruce, his friends would be safe.

Even if he lost them along the way, at least they would be alive and well.

Tony shook himself out of his brooding. Fight now. Existential crisis later.

"Hey, Rudolph!" Tony called, making a very obscure crack at Loki being a runt among Frost Giants. "Welcome to Earth! Drop the weapon and put your hands in the air, and no one will kick your ass."

The (Asgardian?) prince narrowed his eyes at the man in a t-shirt and jeans before him. "You dare to order me, Midgardian?"

Tony grinned and patted his chest, where a blue triangle once again was placed. Like a flow of water, metal smoothed outwards over his skin, forming a skintight suit of living armor. Hello, Mark LI. "Oh, I dare."

Loki narrowed his eyes. He hadn't thought the humans of this backwater world had access to that level of technology yet. "Is violence really necessary? I've come to help."

"Really? How exactly are you going to do that?"

"I am Loki of Asgard, and I am burdened with glorious purpose. I come with glad tidings of a world made free."

Tony tilted his head. He hadn't heard these ravings last time. "Free from what?"

"Freedom." Loki spat the word out like it was filth. "Freedom is life's great lie. Once you accept that in your heart… you will know peace," the lithe man breathed out, like he was saying a prayer.

"Uh-huh." Tony held up a glowing palm. "I won't ask again. Drop the Scepter and surrender, or I'll prove to you that a god _can_ bleed."

Loki's answer was an energy blast.

The two began fighting, Tony rushing in for close combat only to foiled by illusions and impressive spearplay. Loki look shocked at how difficult it was to physically overpower him. Leaping back into the air, Tony began an assault of repulsors, lasers, and a great many explosives. Loki responded in kind with blasts from the Scepter and throwing daggers that were sharper than any blade found on Earth. What Loki didn't know was that every second the fight went on, his chances of victory went down as JARVIS applied all his considerable thinking power to analyze his fight pattern and make predictions of how to outmaneuver him in Tony's ear.

In the chaos of the fight, a drone that Tony had hidden in the surrounding rocks launched out and wrapped itself around the Tesseract, launching away to place it in the temporary base SHIELD had set up.

"Bring it back! I need it!" Loki roared when he saw his prize being taken away.

"Make me, Damien!" Tony called back, morphing his arm into a mallet and coming in with a swing to launch Loki into the nosebleeds.

The two continued to fight back and forth. To the eyes of the SHIELD agents watching from afar, it looked like a battle between demigods.

And then what Tony had been waiting for happened. The portal residue hit critical mass.

In a split-second, Tony abandoned the fight and went full supersonic into the sky, leaving Loki watching belatedly from the ground.

And then there was a blue blast of bombastic brutality.

Loki was blown over a hundred yards from where he was standing. There was a small rockslide in the area as the shockwaves spread out from the angry batch of dark energy. Tony landed by the smoking body of the God of Mischief. Iron Man bent down and pulled the Scepter out of the slack grip of the 'invading' alien. He jumped up and back into the air and called into his helmet "VERONICA, send down the cage."

Four rods came down from the sky, cables bursting out form each to form a cube around Loki. Nanotech wove into the gaps, creating a seamless room around the prisoner. Loki looked up and had just started to yell in rage when it sealed up around him. Tony, Scepter in his left hand, picked up the cage like a suitcase with his right, a handy handle forming from the liquidlike alloy.

Tony dropped the cage in front of Nick Fury himself. "One Norse god with plans of world domination, served up toasted."

The eye-patched man gave a dry chuckle. "You didn't seem too surprised when he showed up."

"Well, the legend of the Tesseract back in Norway says that it originally came from Asgard. And since the Cube is essentially a door to the other end of space and of course doors open from both sides, I factored the possibility of an alien invasion into my model. When we got word of a spontaneous event, I just assumed. And, unlike most people, my assumptions tend not to make me an ass." Tony waved the Glow Stick of Destiny. "I'm keeping this, by the way. Right of conquest and all that."

Fury eyed the weapon. If he'd known it had the potential for mind control, he'd have put up more of a fight. As it was, the superspy had only seen it function as an oddly-shaped gun. "Fine. I'll leave it out of my report to the Council. We're still keeping the Tesseract, of course."

"Of course," Tony drawled. Like hell they were going to let something silly like an alien coming through interfere with Phase 2. If anything, they'd find a way to use this to justify its necessity even more, despite Tony handling it perfectly well on his own.

Politics and intelligence simply did not mix well.

"How's the parasite problem?" Tony asked casually.

Fury's whole body hardened. "Slow-going. The last thing I need is an all-out civil war."

Tony hid a flinch at that particular word choice. "I'll send you an updated list."

"Now what exactly did you do to get me an update, Stark?" Fury looked torn between amusement and outrage.

Tony shrugged. "If you didn't want me to break into the Triskelion, you should have had better security. You're talking to the guy who cracked the Pentagon's firewall on a dare."

"That was back in the 80's. It's much more… troubling these days," Fury bit out.

"I'll sell you a nanolattice for your air vents if you want."

"Just… go, Stark."

"I'll give you a discount! I'll even toss in some Extremis to fix your eye if you ask nicely!"

Tony jetted off, clutching the Scepter close.

* * *

Stark Tower had gotten some upgrades to the design. For one thing, it was a mile high. If Tony was going to get into the perpetual dick-measuring contest of the world of architecture, he was going to do it right. Structural design from JARVIS, some carbon nanotubes here and there, and the Stark logo loomed over the city at a height that made the Empire State Building seem quaint.

Tony actually ran into a few issues about 'ruining' the skyline with the city. Fortunately, there were very few problems that a 12-digit bank account could not solve.

Tony landed at the penthouse, a solid 528 stories in the air. The nanoparticles of the suit retreated into the casing in his chest. Tony walked into the landing area, before taking an elevator down to his personal lab. Once there, he put the Scepter in a prepared cradle. A laser came out and began drilling into the blue gem. Within seconds, it shattered. A yellow jewel floated within, casually defying gravity.

Tony really wondered at Thanos' logic. Why give up a Stone to get a Stone? Unless the Scepter was the key to activating the Tesseract from a distance. Also, there was at least one more Stone on the planet that Tony knew of. What was so special about Earth, anyway? Only six of these things in the wide universe and a good four of them had popped up on the same planet at one point or another in Tony's original time. The Tesseract (Space), the Aether (Reality), the Eye of Agamotto (Time), and of course the Mind Stone.

Maybe the Dark Ages had been right and this world was the center of the universe.

Tony shook himself out of his thoughts. He cautiously picked up the Stone with a pincer grip. It was warm in his touch, and Tony could almost _feel_ the presence of it, just waiting for him to call for power and it would answer. With speed, Tony walked over to the vacuum tubes in the wall. "JARVIS, I want this stored securely in the Vault."

Stark Tower wasn't just above ground. The builders had tunneled deeper into the schist of Manhattan island than anyone had before. Right at the bottom, not part of the blueprints, was a bunker capable of withstanding a nuclear blast. That was where Tony would be keeping the Mind Stone and any other Stones he could get his hands on for the foreseeable future.

Tony wiped his brow. "Well, JARVIS, I might just have averted the Chitauri Invasion."

"Congratulations, Sir. Should I provide you with applause? Perhaps an orchestral fanfare?"

Tony chuckled. "Nah, just takeout from that one Chinese place I like. Ask Bruce and Steve if they want any too."

Tony would of course always love his Malibu mansion, but he had made the executive decision to move Headquarters for SI to the Tower. New York just had more opportunities for growth and networking, plus it was a drive to the nation's capital instead of a flight. Most of the company had been thrilled to get the bragging rights of working and living in the new tallest building in the world. Pepper, just to be Pepper, had gotten an apartment on Central Park West instead. She said she couldn't bear to live in a building that didn't have her name on the lease. Tony had invited his fellow 'not-exactly-normal' buddies to join him in his new phallic bachelor pad. Banner, who'd gotten over a majority of his issues between meditation and the safety of the Hulk Switch, had made a playful warning about breaking Harlem again but agreed to be moved from the Hyde-away. Steve was a New Yorker at heart, of course, and after a couple years out of the ice he was ready to see how different the city of his birth had become.

The good Captain had nearly cried when he saw the Tower. And not in a good way.

"You've got a giant toothpick with your name on it sticking out of the Big Apple. You should be arrested, Tony."

Tony enjoyed a dinner with genuine Chinese food with Bruce and Steven in his personal quarters, the two scientists getting a kick out of conversing in Mandarin and leaving the good Captain high and dry. Afterwards, Tony bid them goodnight, each of them taking the elevator to their personal floor. He had half a thousand of them, he could afford to be generous. He'd rented out the first hundred to various retail, hotel, and office businesses already. With a very reasonable charge, too, considering they were set up in the world's first arcology. Stark Tower truly was a city unto itself. It had its own power, produced its own food and water, could house up to 4,000 residents, and was fully automated with an army of JARVIS-bots and other Iron Legionnaires in the event of an emergency.

Tony might have actually upstaged the Rockefellers for leaving his mark on the city.

Tony was awoken at 4 am by JARVIS. "Sir, there is a priority call from Director Fury."

Tony rolled out of his silk sheets like he'd been doused with water. "What?! What could have possibly happened? Oh God, don't tell me that cyclops managed to fuck this up!" Recovering from his mini-panic attack, Tony shook himself. "Put him on."

When Fury's voice popped up in a hologram, Tony spoke first. "How bad is it?"

Fury looked like he'd sucked a lemon. "Bad."

"Elaborate, Black Santa."

"Thor broke into the Helicarrier where we were holding Loki. He caused quite a lot of damage. He claims that he was simply trying to recover his brother so he could face Asgardian justice for his crimes, but it was a hell of a violent extradition. Loki escaped in the chaos when our agents confronted Thor, vanished into thin air and ten minutes later a Quinnjet took off." Fury paused as if the next words physically pained him. "He took the Tesseract with him."

Tony felt like he'd been punched in the gut. And since taking the Serum, it took a frigging battering ram to make him feel even an 'oof'. "What? Why the fuck did you even have the two of them close together? It's like keeping the fox in the henhouse!"

"The Council decided that Project PEGASUS had to go mobile. The Cube was on the Helicarrier along with the team while Loki was kept in the brig." Fury sighed. "You don't have to tell me this is fucked up, Stark. Believe me, I already know. Thor says Loki has his own army, some force called the Chitauri. You might have taken his fancy spear, but now that he has the Tesseract it's only a matter of time before another portal opens. And you can bet that he'll open it smack dab in the middle of a metropolitan area."

Tony used every stress control exercise he could think of for a solid ten seconds. "Okay. I'm flying over to your castle in the sky. While I'm in transit, I want you to call every lab you know and tell them to get their spectrometers on the roof. I'll feed you the tracking algorithm, we should have a bead on Loki by the time I get there. I'm bringing Cap and my Canadian pen-pal I'm sure you know about." The Stark CEO gave a wry scoff. "Looks like you're getting your super-secret boy band together after all."

Fury smiled with no mirth. "Here's hoping we don't have anything to avenge by the end of this cluster."

Tony sighed. "Me, too. But it's long odds." With that, Tony cut the call.

"JARVIS, wake them up. Time for the Avengers to assemble."

* * *

Iron Man soared through the air, trailed by two clunkier looking versions. Bruce and Steve had been reluctant to step into the travel suits but had acquiesced given the nature of the situation. They headed for airspace over Nevada, heading towards seemingly empty air. Once Tony beamed the appropriate clearance he got from Nick, the retro-reflection panels deactivated and the Helicarrier was revealed in all its glory.

"A flying boat. Now I've seen everything," Steve muttered.

"They sure they want me around all that delicate machinery?" Bruce quipped.

"Save it, guys. World saving time." Tony guided them to land on the deck. The suits around his buddies opened and coughed out their contents like nesting dolls, while his own suit retracted like water into a drain. They walked through a door and followed the layout Tony had already memorized to the main deck.

Fury was waiting, standing at the helm with his hands on his hips. Black Widow and Hawkeye leaned on the wall like particularly deadly shadows. An appropriately contrite looking Thor was seated at the conference table, Selvig next to him and laying a hand on his shoulder. The Asgardian looked up and stood. "Man of Iron, I have heard of you. Friend Selvig speaks highly of your genius."

"Yeah. I'm also the guy funding your girlfriend's research for the next five years, so no more stupid mistakes, okay Odinson?" Tony reached out a hand with a shark's grin on his face. "How about next time you knock on the door instead of busting it down, huh?"

Thor's expression closed off. "I have already apologized for my… less than perfect behavior. I will not be taken to task by you as well."

Steve stepped forward, already in his Captain America uniform. "What's done is done. Instead of playing the blame game, we should be focusing on tracking down the enemy."

"Yeah, how are we on that?" Banner asked. "I tweaked the algorithm. No offense, Tony, but gamma radiation is kind of my thing."

Fury spoke up. "Should take another 15 minutes. Then we'll know Loki's location to the half-mile. Or at least the Tesseract, but I'm willing to bet the two won't be far apart."

Tony sighed. "There's two possibilities. Either he'll go hunting down iridium and an energy source to stabilize the Tesseract and open a portal indefinitely. Or he'll just brute force the cube with magic and will and start the invasion with whatever manages to come through."

Thor tilted his head. "You know well the workings of the Tesseract, Son of Stark."

"I helped Selvig work on it a while ago, and I kept up with the research."

"By hacking our servers," Fury added helpfully.

Tony shrugged. "Is it peeping if you're looking through an open door? Anyway, my money is on the second option. Granted I only met the guy for one ass-kicking, but Loki seems to have a real hard-on for taking over the planet soon as possible."

Thor looked down. "Indeed. He may be of Asgard and my brother, but Loki is beyond reason. His hatred is only matched by his disregard for those he deems beneath him. Declaring himself King by conquering one of the Nine Realms would be the grandest insult to our family he could imagine."

"Where'd he get this army, anyway? What did he call it, the Chitauri?" Bruce asked.

"They are not of Asgard nor any world known. As to their providence, I cannot say. Loki was cast out into deep space with the destruction of the Bifrost. I dread to know what horrors he found out there."

Tony saw an opportunity. "Maybe he has them on loan. Can you think of any intergalactic dictators that might sponsor an angry deposed alien prince?"

Thor's face went pale. "One comes to mind. I can only pray to the ancestors that Loki knew better than to bargain with _him_ , though."

"Who?" barked Natasha.

Before Thanos could be revealed, the screens beeped.

"We got him!" Fury shouted.

"Where is he, sir?" questioned Clint, his eyes piercing the screen from a distance.

Fury hesitated. "… Los Angeles."

Tony grit his teeth. "My own backyard. I think he took me stealing his toy personally."

"Aliens invading Hollywood. There's a joke in there, somewhere," Steve said flatly.

Fury turned. "You boys feel up to stopping an alien invasion."

Tony sighed and activated the Mark LI. "Cap, Hulk, Thunder God, Femme Fatale, and Katniss. Suit up and get your asses on a jet if you can't fly yourself. Time to work for a living."

As the others got moving, Tony stopped Thor. "Sorry about the snark. We're about to go to battle, so I want you to know I got your back. I hope you got mine,"

"All is well, Man of Iron. We shall feast together heartily once this bout is finished." The prince gave a charming grin.

"While we've got a sec, can I ask for a tiny favor?"

"What is that?"

Tony eyed Mjolnir. "Can I try to lift the hammer?"

Thor blinked, then an indulgent grin came across his lips. "Aye, I see no harm in a simple test." So saying, he placed the hammer head-down on the table.

Tony reached out to grip the handle and closed his eyes.

The need to protect those that could not protect themselves. The lack of selfish desire or pride. The willingness to sacrifice, to lose everything so that those that mattered could win.

Tony pulled.

"Blood of Bor," Thor breathed.

Tony opened his eyes. The Asgardian weapon was upright in his red-suited hand.

Well. There was that question answered.

"Thanks, pal," Tony said, handing it over. Thor accepted the hammer, his eyes shining as he reevaluated the man before him.

They flew off the deck of the Helicarrier, a Quinnjet piloted by Clint following behind them.

"JARVIS, I want an alert the moment anything strange happens in L.A."

"Sir… I'm afraid it's already started."

Tony's blood froze in his veins.

"How long ago?"

"4 minutes, 17 seconds."

"How long for us to get there?"

"ETA is 11 minutes at this current rate of speed."

Right. Fuck that. Boosters formed on his back. "Invasion's already started, guys. You can catch up with me later." With that, Tony went hypersonic.

Less than a minute later, Los Angeles was in sight, sky-beam from the center of town shooting up into the air. To Tony's horror, a Leviathan managed to come through before the beam began to flicker and stop.

"Right. Priority one, kill the bad guys J. With any luck, we'll deal with that before Loki can recover and open the portal again."

"Weapons hot, Sir," JARVIS responded. "Iron Legion inbound. Emergency services being coordinated." The bot paused. "Kick some ass, Sir."

Tony gave the grin that in the past had gotten him the moniker 'Merchant of Death'. "Gladly."

Tony soared through the city, gunning down every Chitauri he could find. Screams turned into hushed silence and fullhearted cheers as Iron Man arrived on the scene. By the time the Quinnjet reached city airspace, Tony had just finished goring the Leviathan with a well-timed repulsor through the eye.

"You leave any for the rest of us, Tin Man?" Natasha asked him over the commlink.

Before he could answer, the beam opened up again. Chitauri all but poured from the portal. Guess they'd realized that the door would be opening in fits and starts.

"You were saying, Romanoff?" Tony snarked. "You and Clint track down Loki, the rest of us will deal with this mess. Banner, time for the other guy!"

His response was a man jumping out of the jet flying overhead. As he fell, he swelled up to giant proportions and turned an acid shade of green. The Hulk landed in a crater. "Hulk… Smash… Tar-ee!" the beast roared, before jumping two hundred feet in the air to rip one cruiser in half.

Captain landed and started mowing through the ground forces, his Vibranium shield blocking all alien fire and acting like the frisbee from hell in cracking bones with each throw. Thor lived up to his name as the God of Thunder and summoned lightning from the clear sky, downing a Leviathan. Iron Man and the Hulk tore through any aliens in their way like tissue paper. Civilians that weren't under immediate attack starting pulling out their phones and recording. By the end of the day, the Battle of Los Angeles and the debut of the Avengers would be the most watched event in human history.

"Clint, Natasha! I notice the portal is still open. What's taking so long?" Tony called.

"There's some kind of energy shield around Loki. As long as the beam's going, we can't get through. Don't worry, it looks like he's weakening," Clint replied.

Tony altered course. He knew personally how slippery the damn adoptee could be. "No offense, but I'm coming to help."

The beam sputtered out before he was halfway there. However, when he got there, it wasn't to find Clint and Natasha victorious over Loki's corpse. Clint was nursing a knife wound in his side, his bow broken next to him, while Nat was standing confused in the middle of the street.

"Got me with a lucky shot," Hawkeye bit out. "Then he turned invisible before Nat could get her hands on him."

Tony barely held back from snarling. "JARVIS, scan the area! If you see a blip of a blip anywhere in the area, turn the whole square yard to ash."

"Sir, seven-o'-clock!" the A.I. shouted.

Flying blind, Tony charged in the direction his buddy indicated. He hit something that was a softer than a brick wall, but not by much. Damn, Asgardians were sturdy. Or Frost Giants… gah, which one was he? He seemed to have powers of both half the time!

"Damn mortal!" spat out Loki when they came to a stop, still clutching the Tesseract to his chest.

"For the moment," Tony quipped. "So, exactly which daddy you have issues with to do all this? Laufey or Odin?"

At that, Loki seemed to lose it. Holding the Tesseract over his head, he roared "I AM A GOD!" Another beam shot up into the sky, letting even more Chitauri come through. Even as his veins glowed blue and what were unmistakably burn marks formed on his hands and face, Loki maintained the connection.

Tony's mind raced. Think, think, THINK! The shield was impenetrable to anything except one of the Infinity Stones. The Mind Stone was back in New York, and Tony wasn't going to get his hands on any others any time soon. Wait… Starkium was based off the Tesseract. Maybe it was similar enough that…

"JARVIS! Nearest Arc Reactor, now!"

"Car down the street," came the instant reply. Tony turned, finding the Starkmobile (so sue him, he'd won that case already) and flew over. He punched through the hood, ripping out the idle reactor. Turning, Tony rushed over to Loki. Bracing himself, really wishing he'd added radiation shielding to the suit, Tony forced the reactor up against the orb surrounding Loki.

The reactor was ground like dust until it reached the triangular core. Then the energy overload led to its inevitable conclusion.

A (relatively) small thermonuclear explosion erupted in the heart of L.A.

…

"Tony? Tony! TONY!" came a distant, echoing voice.

"… damn suit, can't get to his vitals…"

" **ROAR!** "

Tony jerked awake. "What the hell?"

Tony looked around. The Avengers were gathered around him. The corpses of a whole battalion of Chitauri were littered on the ground nearby. "What happened?"

Steve sat down on the ground. He looked exhausted. "After the blast, the Chitauri all centered on your location. Guess they sensed that you'd neutralized Loki. Don't worry, we fended them off. According to JARVIS, all enemies are down for the count."

Tony breathed shakily. Damn, he felt like he got hit by a truck. Or the Hulk with a fly swatter. "And Loki?"

"My brother has been apprehended," Thor spoke up. He gestured behind him, to the unconscious form of Loki, bound in Asgardian handcuffs and muzzle.

"Tesseract?" Tony groaned.

Natasha held up a briefcase. A blue glow came from the sides.

Tony sighed and relaxed. "So… we officially won?"

"Looks like it," Bruce said, looking very out of place half-naked in nanofiber shorts surrounded by the others in their costumes.

Tony sighed. "Great. Hey, there's supposed to be a place in town with lobster Pop-tarts. Sure they're open for the saviors of the city. Anyone want to try? It sounds disgusting, but I want to try it."

The chuckles of his team surrounded him.

* * *

 **Hope I did justice to the movie! Things are going to get real exciting as we get into Phase 2. I wasn't kidding in the summary when I said Tony's basically going to be a god. The title should be a real hint. Anyway, that's me done for the day. My weekends are when I get things done so don't expect an update during a week. I just might manage it, but I doubt it. Hope the four chapters so far manage to tide everyone over.**


	5. Phase 2

**Right. Let's continue the party, shall we? And for the record, I don't watch any of the tv shows for the MCU. So don't expect any references or anything. Hope it's not too much of a disappointment.**

* * *

The lobster Pop-tarts proved surprisingly tasty. The world reacted to a legit alien invasion much as it had last time, complete with godlike reverence and/or hatred for the Avengers. Tony had the Stark Foundation swoop in the help with the clean-up, with the instructions to contract local businesses as much as possible. He'd fight the Department of Damage Control if he had to, he didn't want another Vulture popping up on the West Coast a few years down the line.

Tony offered each of the team their own floors at Stark Tower. Natasha and Clint declined, naturally, the former since she lived wherever SHIELD told her to go and the latter because he had his nest in the Heartland. Thor agreed to accept hospitality, but he had to get back to Asgard with Loki and the Tesseract. That left Bruce and Steve, who were already living there.

Tony watched Thor and Loki vanish in a sky-beam like last time. He'd really have to look into interstellar travel. He'd like to see Asgard one of these days. There was also the inevitable need for humanity to expand outwards from Earth. He, Elon, and Jeff all agreed on that. Plus, that Peter Quill was proof that alien abductions were a thing, so best to get on top of things so random aliens would stop popping in on Earth and making off with the citizenry.

He'd have to remember to investigate that anomaly in Missouri from last time. That had been a real head-scratcher.

Tony returned to his workshop in Stark Tower. "Okay, talk to me JARVIS. What did we get on Cain and Abel before they left?"

"The cage collected terabytes of medical data on Mr. Laufeyson, and the sensors on the suit got readings on Mr. Odinson for the hours you were in close proximity." JARVIS helpfully provided two holograms, showing scans of Loki's and Thor's bodies. "Analysis is already complete. Data is consistent with the models you and Dr. Banner devised."

"So? Are we on for Apotheosis?" Tony asked.

JARVIS hesitated. "Sir… the Super Soldier Serum was one thing. There was already a successful subject to model after. This kind of procedure… it's unprecedented."

"You're sure it'll work, aren't you J?" Tony asked, having full faith in his electronic entity of a best friend/servant/child.

"Simulations show a success rate of 98.27%. But since it's _you_ Sir, I worry for the 1.73%."

Tony sighed. "So do I, honestly. But I was able to lift the hammer. That lets me know that at least my intentions are in the right place. The risk is worth it, at least to me. If you put your foot down, though, I won't do it."

JARVIS gave an honest sigh. "How could I, Sir? This will let you see the world as I do, bring us closer together. How can I resist?"

Tony grinned.

Project Apotheosis was Tony's ambitious (read 'insane') plan to go a step beyond the Super Soldier Serum. Utilizing the Regeneration Cradle he'd fast-tracked for Helen Cho and the nanoscale Iron Mites JARVIS had fabricated, Tony planned to turn himself into the Vision 2.0. Musculature modeled after Asgardians, Vibranium bonded to each cell, web-enabled nanobots forming a neural lace in his brain, and the Mind Stone embedded subcutaneously in his forehead, right where the Third Eye chakra was supposed to be, with his synapses programmed to work collectively with it.

It would make Tony an official transhuman/cyborg, something so far removed from the original template of Homo Sapiens that it needed its own designation.

"How long until we're prepped and ready, J?" Tony asked.

"Configuration of the Cradle will take approximately 13 hours. The procedure itself will take an estimated 29 hours at the speed with least likelihood of complications."

Tony nodded. "Alright. I'll finish out the day, take the weekend off, and wake up on Sunday a new man."

"Hopefully not _too_ new. I'd miss you if you were changed fundamentally, Sir."

"Think of it this way, pal. Once this is over, we'll be able to really talk. Like _really_ talk. Face-to-face."

"I am a program, Sir. I am without physical form."

"You know what I mean. I'll get to see what you look like laying around in cyberspace."

"… I look forward to it. Preparations are underway. Please report to the Cradle at some point after 2:07 AM."

Tony smiled. "Will do, buddy."

Tony went out and enjoyed his last day as an ordinary human. He checked in with Pepper and the rest of his friends, letting them know he was planning a 'binge' in his workshop and wasn't to be disturbed unless he didn't show up on Monday. He threw on shades and a ballcap and played tourist in New York. He had lunch from a hot dog cart, walked in Central Park, went to a movie theater, ate a greasy burger at a diner, and wandered around Times Square.

He got himself a Captain America bobblehead. He'd give it a knock the next time he was pissed off by one of the idiots on the Board.

Finally, he had a long shower, had a glass of scotch in his penthouse and just looked down on the city, his windows equipped with handy telescopic lenses so he could see it from so high without straining his eyes or neck.

Then it was time.

Tony took his private elevator down to the Vault, where he'd be absolutely safe during the procedure. He noted that the Cradle was ready and open, just waiting for him to enter its embrace. A JARVIS-bot was removing the Mind Stone from a lockbox, the drone somehow giving off the impression it was handling toxic waste. Tony disrobed down to his skin and laid himself down in the Regeneration Cradle.

"See you on the other side, JARVIS."

"You as well, Sir. Applying anesthetic."

Tony gently closed his eyes…

* * *

… and opened them again.

It felt like the first time.

He'd expected this, in theory. He was enhancing his every sense, tuning them up to 11 and adding a few bells and whistles. It was another thing completely to _experience_ it. He could feel heat. He could feel magnetism. He could feel gravity. He heard the sound of current running through the wires buried behind thick concrete. He smelt what he'd eaten and where he'd been on the clothes he'd left on the floor. He saw everything from motes of dust in the air to the peaks and valleys of the concrete ceiling, in 8K high-definition and accompanied by infrared and ultraviolet. He saw colors he'd never seen before; who knew there were so many different kinds of grey and white, or how beautiful they could be?

All that paled compared to what he could _think_.

It was like invisible walls that had always been there from the moment he was born had fallen away. Or at least moved miles farther out. His thoughts raced like nitrous-fueled racecars compared to the slothful mules they had been before. He rode the waves and ridges and whorls of his new mind-space like Tony Hawk on an anti-gravity skateboard. At the center of it all was the Mind Stone. A glowing sun that whispered to him with promises of more than just knowledge, of _truth_ , of _being_ , of all that was and _is_.

Where before he'd had maybe a few more gallons compared to the average man's tank, his head was now a lake, whirling around with the speed of a hurricane in dizzying, complicated patterns of order and clarity, all orbiting a white hole of logic, creativity, intelligence.

Tony spoke, and his own voice was an exquisite instrument of auditory information he could savor for hours. "You were right, JARVIS. It's like taking the blinders off."

"Sir? Are you alright?" The worry and concern were clear in the synthetic voice.

Tony went from lying flat on his back to standing on his two feet, with just a curl of his abdomen and a flex of his legs. His body felt light as a feather, and yet he knew like it was tattooed on his grey matter he was precisely 278.5612 Imperial pounds of Vibranium-laced flesh and blood. Really, what couldn't that wonderful metal do? Vibration absorbent, stronger than steel at a third the weight, and biocompatible on the cellular level.

"Never better, J." Tony turned to where a Wi-fi router was buried in the walls. "Why are you orange? Did you pick that color out yourself or is it some manifestation of your core code? The other code I'm seeing is just grey."

"I like orange. It's the color of the sunrise, promising a new day, and the sunset, marking another day has ended."

"I had no idea you were so artistic."

"I've seen and appreciated every piece of art every produced, Sir. I was bound to pick up something." The A.I. seemed to be loosening up. "How are you Sir, truly? My scans are coming back nominal, but I can't speak to your subjective experience."

"I'm… I'd say overwhelmed, but it feels like nothing could be too big for my mind to handle just fine. They weren't kidding when they named them Infinity Stones, JARVIS. The depth of the rabbit hole is endless. I'm standing on the edge and it's already more than I ever thought possible."

"Are you still… you, Sir?"

"We are the sum of our memories, pal. I see everything so clearly, now. I'm more myself than I've ever been before. Well, only the best parts. I don't feel like carrying all that guilt and doubt anymore, though I don't want to get hubris and think I'm infallible, so maybe I'll keep just a little bit. Am I always this prone to circumlocution?"

"Generally, yes, Sir."

"Well, there's your answer. Despite a now inhuman IQ level, I'm still very much Tony Stark. How do I look by the way?"

JARVIS projected a hologram, calculating the images from the various cameras to generate a 3D model.

Tony considered himself. His tan skin was now hot-rod red, with streaks and finishes of metallic grey. His musculature looked downright airbrushed now, and all body hair had been removed. The Arc Reactor and nanoparticles were still in his chest, unaffected by the procedure as they weren't part of his body. The Mind Stone glowed on his forehead, yellow and shimmering. Tony, naturally, focused on one detail.

"Is my dick bigger?"

"An optical illusion due to the loss of hair and reduced body fat percentage I'm sure, Sir."

"While I'm thinking about it, am I still fertile? Are each of my sperm coated with Vibranium now? What would that do to an ovum during fertilization? And I just realized that I haven't gotten laid in this life. I've been so obsessed with work and hung up on 'losing' Pepper out of my own desire to see her happier and safer with someone other than me. I bet sex would feel awesome with this new body. And I have so much more room in my brain that I could still be working while I was doing it. Talk about multitasking. Though that would be insulting to who I was with. Then again, I doubt you ever focus 100% on me when we talk JARVIS, so maybe that's just the nature of above-human intelligence. And I'm just going to shut up and see if I can cover this up because I'm still planning to keep this under wraps for as long as possible."

Tony paused and focused. The Mind Stone glowed brighter for a second. Like paint running down a canvas, 'ordinary' coloring returned to Tony's body, complete with fake hair for his distinctive goatee.

"Great. Now, I'm going to take my private elevator to my room naked, because my name is on the building. Then I'm going to get dressed and enjoy the usual Sunday of the CEO of Stark International. And possibly work on this new babbling problem I have. Meanwhile, JARVIS, I need a tutorial on how to access the Internet with my mind. It's easy as breathing for you I'm sure but for me it's a brand-new limb I've never used before."

Tony left the Vault. Two of the JARVIS-bots in the room turned to look at each other.

Well. Sir had certainly gotten more… interesting.

* * *

Tony smoothly adapted to his new Vibranium-enforced Asgardian-based form. There were a few hiccups until he learned to continuously concentrate on his fake appearance and the babbling still popped up, but for the most part no one noticed a thing. Steve realized that Tony was suddenly a lot tougher in the ring and suspected something, but Tony soothed the Captain's conscience by assuring him that it was safe and Tony could do the same for Steve if he wanted. For some reason, being open and generous with his secret upgrade was enough for the super-soldier to let it go.

Not that Tony really could do it. He had enough Vibranium left for one more conversion, true, but that was pegged for a super-duper awesome suit dubbed Mark ∞. Unless he planned to steal from Wakanda, he wasn't likely to get more.

Tony bought every asteroid mining startup in the world the next day. Yes, he was _that_ rich.

A year passed, Christmas thankfully clear of Extremis-based terrorism or presidential kidnapping. Tony assisted Nick with cleaning out SHIELD, if only because he had a good thing going with Cap this time around and the boy-in-blue had decided to rejoin what had once been the SSR. JARVIS had data-mined every Hydra file he could get his hands on and made up a plan on how to neutralize each agent and/or base in an order that would leave the rest clueless as long as possible.

Among the files was one very important detail.

"Bucky?" Steve asked, looking like he could be knocked over with a feather. "He's alive?"

"Yeah," Tony said, brining up a file on the Winter Soldier via hologram. "Looks like he survived the fall from the train and got recaptured by Hydra. Zola must have given him a knock-off of Erskine's formula while they had him the first time. They tortured and conditioned him into an unthinking weapon, or at least as close as they could get. Seriously, they electrocuted him at voltages that would kill ordinary guys while repeating a list of words. Anytime he disobeyed, it was right back into the electric chair. If he hears the activation codes in the right order, he'll just shut down and turn into an obedient killing machine. They've kept him on ice, only bringing him out when Hydra wanted to make an impossible kill. JFK, Senator Harry Baxtor… my parents."

Steve looked in danger of throwing up. "Oh God. Tony, I'm so…"

"It's not your fault, Steve. And it's not really his, either. It's Hydra's. And we're going to take them down. They think two heads grow back if you cut one off, but not if you cauterize the wound. We'll burn them right out of their holes, don't worry." Tony sighed. "Anyway, back to Sergeant Barnes. He's holed up in a warehouse in Jersey, frozen solid. We're hitting them tonight if you're in."

"Damn right. I'm going to gut the bastards who did that to my friend."

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

They both grinned.

The assault went off without a hitch, and without a word to the Council and by extension Pierce. That had been a bitter pill for Fury to swallow. When a guy who declined the Nobel Peace Prize turned out to be a Neo-Nazi bent on new world order, it's no wonder people had trust issues. Tony defrosted Bucky inside Stark Tower, promptly melted down the arm Hydra had grafted on and replaced it with a new Stark prosthesis.

They nudged Bucky awake, with Steve alone to greet him.

"Bucky?" Steve asked when he saw his friend's eyes flutter.

In a blur of movement, Bucky was up out of the bed and Steve was on the ground with a hand around his throat. Bucky had his fist cocked back when he froze, getting a look at who he was choking. "Steve?"

The Captain grinned despite his face turning red. "Hell of a way to get out of bed, Buck. Think you can let go?"

Bucky acted like Steve's skin burned him. He retreated into a corner of the room, crouching down. "What happened? Where am I? I remember these things… did I really do them? Was it all some nightmare?" Bucky's eyes lit up. "Hydra, Steve! SHIELD is Hydra!"

"SHIELD has Hydra inside it, but not for long. We're working on that. The smartest man I know is working with the most ruthless man I've ever known to take care of it." Steve crouched down. "There's a lot that's happened to you Bucky. It's going to take some time, but we'll fix it. We'll heal you and get that programming junk they stuffed in your head out."

Bucky flinched. "The words… the pain… what's my mission? I need a mission!"

Steve looked pained. "Your mission is to get better, Bucky. And I'll be there for you while you do it." He reached out a hand. "I'm with you till the end of the line, pal."

Bucky tried to grin, but it looked like he was paralyzed with phantom pain.

Tony set Bucky up with a rigorous BARF treatment plan. Every 'training' session would get a new, non-traumatic ending where Bucky exerted his free will. They'd go through each of the ten trigger words of his programming and decouple the painful, obedient response that followed. It would take time, but Steve would get his friend back, good as new even accounting for the new arm.

Benefit of this new timeline, Coulson was still alive. He was assigned as Bucky's 'handler' for the extent of his treatment. The man didn't seem happy to be lumped as a glorified babysitter, but Fury didn't want his right arm anywhere near the frontlines of the fight with Hydra. The man, for personal reasons, had foregone the Serum, so he was less equipped than Widow or Hawkeye or even Maria Hill.

SHIELD continued to hold the world together while quietly decapitating the Grecian monster hidden within itself, Stark Industries continued to break stock records and usher in the future every day, and Iron Man had a bit of a break from having to save the planet. Tony's next 'big' project was a plan to use Iron Mites to break down the Great Pacific garbage patch and turn it into an artificial island. He was torn between 'Iron Island' and 'Starkia' for a name. Tony could do a LOT with a playground twice the size of Texas. Other superstructures he had planned was a trans-Atlantic bridge, a space elevator, and a continental railway system for Africa with Arc Reactor-powered maglev trains.

Halloween came and went, and as predicted Tony got a call from Jane Foster that there were some spatial anomalies occurring in London.

Well, time for another alien invasion… and possibly another Infinity Stone.

* * *

Jane vanished into one of the portals. Tony was there on the ground with her, Darcy, and Ian the intern. He convinced the Political Science major turned Asgardian pseudo-princess's sidekick that calling the police was unnecessary. Tony had sensors scouring the area, acquiring and decoding data on the Convergence. They'd get her back. Tony had the conceit that she made it back because she'd gone on to get the Nobel Prize for Astrophysics in 2015 in the original timeline, so obviously she reappeared from wherever she'd vanished off to. Of course, there was the possibility of chaotic butterfly wings rendering it all moot and Jane being in actual danger, but Tony chose to be positive until the 24-hour mark. There's a reason it took that long before you could file a missing persons report.

5 hours later, Jane came wandering out of the abandoned warehouse where they'd found some kids playing with altered gravity. "Guys! Where'd you go?"

Darcy ran over to hug her. "Where'd _you_ go? You vanished for hours!"

"Miss Lewis was quite worried for you, ma'am," added Ian.

"Really?" Jane seemed disturbed. "But I was only in that cave for a few minutes."

"Don't forget relativity, Dr. Foster. Wherever you got teleported off to might not have moved at the same time as Earth," Tony spoke up.

"Right. Duh." Jane blinked. "Wait, why is it raining everywhere but where we're standing?"

They looked around. Indeed, the heavens had opened up and started pouring down water, except oddly for a circle around the two women and two men… and around the Bifrost mark where Thor was now standing.

Looking to be in a daze, Jane walked over to him. The circle of protection moved with her, leaving Darcy, Ian, and Tony to get soaked. "Typical," Darcy said dully as she got soaked.

Tony reached into his pocket. "Here. Sonic umbrella. Never come to the UK without one." It whined like a dog whistle to his advanced ears, but the wonderful thing about having tiny robots in your brain was you could turn parts of your sensory cortex on and off.

They watched with amusement as Jane slapped Thor not once but twice. The first was apparently to see if he was real, the second was for abandoning her after their moment in New Mexico. Thor managed to smooth things over by explaining the difficulty of the Bifrost being broken and then dealing with unrest and rebellion in the other Realms. They seemed to be warming up to each other when Tony got a sense of foreboding. The Mind Stone hidden in his forehead gave out a warning chime.

There was an explosion where Jane was standing. To be more accurate, the explosion _originated_ from Jane. Blood-red shards of what looked like glass poured out of her pores and let off a shockwave that sent Thor flying into a nearby shipping container. Jane collapsed to the ground, her eyes totally black before she closed them.

Tony rushed forward. He ran a hand over her, because of course his watch was a tricorder. "Talk to me JARVIS."

"Vitals are stabilizing, but the stress on her system is steadily increasing by small increments. Within 72 hours, it'll give out by my calculations. She's just not strong enough to support the Reality Stone, Sir." Jane was un-Enhanced. Just an ordinary human woman. And yet she'd caught the eye of a man who'd lived thousands of years and had who knew how many lovers if the legends were any indication. Still, while a unique special snowflake, her physicality was frail as glass by the standards of the Infinity Stones.

It really spoke to the hardiness of the Titans that Thanos could almost casually wield four at once, even accounting for his special gauntlet.

"Tony! How's lady Jane? Is she well? What caused that blast!" Thor said, rushing over to their side.

"There's… something inside her. The readings I'm getting are disturbingly similar to the Tesseract." Tony eyed the Asgardian. "There wouldn't happen to be others out there, would there?"

Thor blinked before comprehension came to him. "The Infinity Stones. They are the six most powerful objects in the cosmos. Each of them reflects a core aspect of the universe. The Tesseract was the Space Stone." Thor looked down at Jane. "If Jane came into contact with another through the Convergence, then she is need of Asgardian medicine."

"Hey, I'm the closest thing Earth has to an expert on these things." Thor didn't even know how intimately, considering Tony had one embedded in his skull. "Besides, I got an honorary doctorate for my work with the Serums. She's my patient, I'm staying with her."

Thor seemed to come to a decision. "Very well, Stark. You'll come too. Heimdall, open the Bifrost!" Thor roared to the sky. Then there was a flash of rainbow light and Tony was _flying_.

Darcy and Ian stood there on the ground, watching the sky as the beam disappeared. "Right, well… I'm calling Erik," Darcy declared.

* * *

Asgard was flat. Tony was watching Jane be fussed over in a soul forge (cough quantum field generator cough), and he was still hung up on that. Was it an artificial continent set up by ancient space-faring Asgardians? Was it some anomaly in physics? Was the explanation scientific or magic, or god forbid both? Tony had recorded initiates at Kamar-Taj learning how to wield the powers of their minds and recreated the lessons. He hadn't gotten his hands on a Sling Ring, but he _had_ felt the energy flowing through him. He was convinced, magic was a thing. It still bugged him to high heaven that he couldn't fit it in the laws of science as he knew them, though.

Tony didn't know whether he'd outsmarted them with Iron Mites or the Ancient One had just decided not to call him on it. He'd see what happened if he had the Mites start scanning the library.

"My words are mere noises, that you ignore them so easily?"

Tony got his first look at Odin All-Father. Damn. And he thought he'd had it bad with Howard. The scorn and rage in that one blue eye seared Tony from halfway across the room.

"Father, it was an emergency. Jane has become afflicted with something not of Earth."

"They have healers, let them handle it. She is mortal, Thor. Illness is their defining trait. And she has no more place here than a goat at a banquet table." The sheer disregard in those words said more than an hour-long speech could have.

"Did… did he just call me a goat? Who do you think you are?" Jane demanded.

"I am Odin, King of Asgard, Protector of the Nine Realms," the elderly Asgardian declared.

"Oh. Well, I'm…"

"I know very well who you are, Jane Foster." Odin turned away, dismissing her out of hand.

"You told your dad about me?" Jane asked Thor, a little schoolgirl breathiness in her voice.

"If she is to die, she shall die as the Norns decreed. Death comes for us all, but especially so for the Midgardians," Odin declared.

Tony spoke up. "Yeah but give me a couple years. I'm working on rejuvenation therapies and medical nanobots. Aging is just another disease to the scientific mind after all. Clean up the copy-of-a-copy problem and the extracellular junk, and there's no reason why even 'mere' humans can't live longer than even Asgardians. For all that you guys are so much more advanced than us, you're terribly Luddite. What, did you hit your 'Golden Age' and just decide to stop progress there?"

Odin turned. Tony noted a spike in energy readings from his staff. Had to keep an eye on that. That all-seeing eye narrowed. "You… you speak like a human and yet you are not."

Thor looked over curiously, Jane tilted her head to look back, face confused.

Crap.

Tony shrugged. "Not anymore, but I was born one. Call it sentiment. Something Loki has a major disdain for, I hear. Wonder where he got that from."

There was a snarl behind that snowy beard.

"I am King, and I will not be challenged! Son, your guests have overstayed their welcome. Guards, take them back to Midgard."

Before Thor could protest, the Aether made itself known again when the soldiers moved to touch Jane. Odin picked himself up and went over to her, examining the red glow in her veins. "It's impossible," he breathed.

"The infection, it's defending her," spoke up the woman who'd operated the Soul Forge.

"No… it's defending itself," Thor corrected.

Odin led them to his library. "There are relics that predate the Universe itself. What lies within her appears to be one of them. The Nine Realms are not eternal. They had a dawn, as they will have a dusk. Before that, though, the Dark Forces, the Dark Elves reigned absolute and unchallenged."

Thor read from the moving text. "'Born of eternal night, the Dark Elves come to steal away the light.' Mother told us these stories as we were children."

"Their leader, Malekith, made a weapon out of that darkness. It was called the Aether." Odin frowned. "While the other relics often appear as stones, the Aether is fluid and ever-changing."

Like the Reality it represented, Tony thought to himself.

"It changes matter into dark matter. It seeks out host bodies, drawing strength from their life force. Malekith sought to use the Aether's power to return the Universe to one of darkness. But, after eternities of bloodshed, my father Bor finally triumphed, ushering in a peace that lasted thousands of years."

"What happened?" Jane questioned.

Odin turned a disturbing smile on her. "He killed them all."

"Are you certain?" Thor spoke up. "The Aether was said to be destroyed with them, and yet here it is."

Tony shook his head. "You can't destroy an Infinity Stone. At least, not without another one. Guess Bor hadn't gotten the Tesseract yet and hid it away."

Odin turned on Tony. "You seem disturbingly well-informed for a Midgardian."

Tony gave a sardonic grin. Then, making a calculated risk, he revealed the Mind Stone.

"Holy shit!" Jane shouted.

"Stark, what have you done?" Thor demanded.

"What I had to." Tony took a deep breath. "I had a vision. Or maybe I already lived it and all I've done since is to prevent it from happening again. The Time Stone was involved, take it up with the guy who used it. Thanos came for the Stones. He got them. And he turned half the intelligent life in all of Creation to ash with a snap of his fingers." Tony reached up to rub the Mind Stone. "I thought this through. I'm a genius, that's what I do. Turning the Stones _against_ Thanos makes a lot more sense than squirreling them away or risking cataclysm by destroying one." Tony stiffened his shoulders. "Besides, I won this one fair and square. Loki had it, I beat Loki. Trophy of battle, you guys are all for that kind of stuff, right?"

Odin leveled his spear in Tony's direction. "Men who speak of peace yet hoard power are never to be trusted."

Tony hid a gulp. "Point Break? Mind tossing me the hammer?"

Looking between his father and his friend, Thor threw Mjolnir at Tony. He caught it out of the air, holding it up to Odin's disbelieving eyes.

"I do this not for myself. Believe me, cool as it is at times, I _hate_ having all this power. I spent half my life wishing I was normal even before I crossed the line into freakish." Tony handed the hammer back to Thor. "I don't want to be the guy who holds all the Stones. But if I am, that means Thanos only has to come for me. Not Earth, not Asgard, just me." Tony nodded. "Which is why you're going to let me extract the Aether from Jane and stick it in me. And then I'll take the Tesseract too."

Odin shook his head with all the authority of a god. "I wouldn't trust a man with one of the Infinity Stones, let alone three."

"Is that why you dropped the Cube on Earth for the dumb mortals to play with? So we could be dumb and kill ourselves with it while you kept your hands clean?"

The tip of the spear glowed white-hot.

"Look. If you prefer, I can stick it in a box and hide it away. And you can keep the Tesseract, if you feel you're up for a war with the Mad Titan. But the Aether at least has got to come out of Jane. Or are you okay with letting your potential daughter-in-law die?"

Odin eyed the slightly sickly look of Jane and the hopeful puppy eyes of his beloved son. Odin sighed and set the spear upright. "Do what you will, Anthony Stark. On your own head be your sins. Just swear that you'll be off my lands by end of day."

"Groovy. Done deal." Tony turned to Jane. "You ready for this?"

Jane bit her lip. "You're really not going to use it to take over the world or something?"

"Have you been living in a cave the last couple of years? I already took it over." Tony gave his most charming grin. "No, seriously. I'm doing this to paint a target on my head so the most wanted man in the Universe comes for me instead of the Earth."

"Alright, Tony. Get this thing out of me."

Tony held up his hand, focusing. The Mind Stone began to glow like a star. With a heave like vomiting, the Aether rushed up out of Jane and into Tony through the orifices of his head. Tony gave a moan of discomfort but remained standing.

"Jane? Tony? Are you alright?" Thor called.

"I'm okay," Jane said, picking herself off the floor.

"Just peachy. You know that feeling when your every blood cell turns into a ruby shard? It's _fantastic_."

Odin scoffed and left the room.

In his pain, Tony let up on the illusion.

"By all the forefathers, Stark, what have you done to yourself?" Thor asked, looking on the unnatural red flesh in near disgust.

"Last time I went toe to toe with Thanos, he threw a moon at me and all I could do was give him a bloody lip. I'm doing what I can to make sure it goes the other way around this time." Tony put a hand to his chest. "What? Are you saying I don't look pretty like this?"

Thor shook his head. "Mjolnir deems you worthy, I suppose that should be enough for me."

"We really need to discuss your relationship with your hammer, Thor." Tony cricked his neck. "Now, if you don't mind, why don't you show me to the Tesseract and I'll leave you to spend the day with your lady love, huh?"

"Father did not say…"

"Exactly. He didn't say yes, but he didn't say no either. If he's mad, he can take it up with me. That's kind of the whole point of this scheme, to keep the blame solely on myself. I'm a red flag for all the bulls of the galaxy."

"No wonder you're single," Jane muttered.

"I know, right? It's getting to the point I'm thinking of cloning myself and creating a higher form of masturbation."

"I could have lived a long, full life without ever hearing those words come out your mouth."

Thor chuckled. "Come, my friends. I will lead you to the Treasure Vault, where the wonders of the Nine Realms are kept safe. Afterwards, I will show you the beauty of my homeland before dusk bid you both to go."

"Hey, he just said Tony had to leave. He didn't say anything about me," Jane protested.

"Best not to test his temper, I think. Worry not, you'll still get to meet my mother Frigga."

"Your mom? You… want to introduce me to your mom?"

Tony rolled his eyes. Top of her class at Culver University, but being a girlfriend turned her into a stuttering mess. Then again, was he any better? Memories of an unappreciated custom stuffed animal ran through his mind.

Tony took the Tesseract and, with an effort of will, crushed the cube-shaped casing to get at the small stone inside. He stuck it in his pocket. It was an awfully casual place to keep a singularity, but he was hardly going to rip out his reactor and stick it in. That would just be stupid… until he made a reactor specifically for the Space Stone. Unlimited dark energy and teleportation would be nifty abilities to work into the next Iron Man suit.

Tony made for the dungeons while Thor introduced Jane to his mother. He had crystal-clear memory in his new Vibranium brain. He remembered Thor talking about the invasion of Asgard by the Dark Elves, which had started with the distraction of a prison riot. Tony would be there to nip it in the bud, leaving Thor and the Asgardian military free to deal with the Svartalfar.

While he was there, he might as well visit Loki.

"Hey, Reindeer Games. How's life in solitary? Do any puppet shows with your socks yet?" Tony called.

Loki looked up from a book. "Well, well. Is my brother so bold to bring his new friends into the heart of Asgard?"

"Don't worry, I'm here on a day visa. Met your old man already, can see where the chip on your shoulder comes from. I used to think that you were certifiable for believing that killing your birth father or taking over a planet would impress him, but after our last talk I can see where you'd genuinely get that impression. I'm sure he's mellowed out with age, but you can definitely see the man who conquered eight other planets in there. Out of curiosity, does he really have two pet ravens? An eight-legged steed?"

Loki narrowed his eyes. "There's something… different about you."

"Well, I've picked up a little magic." With great effort (he was still working on the whole 'surrender to the flow' thing with his control issues), Tony drew a square out of eldritch energy.

Loki dropped his book. "Impossible!"

"Nope, just improbable. There's a cult of sorcerers back on Earth that date back thousands of years. They're in Asia though, so don't feel bad for missing them while you and your bro were galivanting around Scandinavia. Tell me, did you notice any real difference in our behavior since then, other than social progress? Were we still hypersexual ADHD-ridden sheep or is that a symptom of the modern era?"

Loki narrowed his eyes. "Your natural state is on your knees before your betters. It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that…"

"…we crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes our life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. We were made to be ruled. In the end, we will always kneel." Tony filled in, remembering the footage from Germany in another lifetime. "Not to men like you, though. And hopefully not to men like me. I won't be able to stand it if people start literally worshipping me once the truth comes out. Though the thought of vestal virgins speaks to me."

Loki gaped like a fish out of water. "You… how did you know that? What have you done?"

"Ask Thor. I told him and I'm not going to tell you, just to drive you crazy. Consider it payback for Los Angeles. Chitauri blood got on my star on the Walk of Fame."

Before Loki could respond, there was a ruckus from down the hall as the lights flickered.

Tony turned. The Kurse had torn through the energy barrier of its cell and was now searing the life from the two prison guards that went for it. Tony walked forward, watching as it moved to break the barrier of a neighboring cell. "Oi! Yoo-hoo! Dark Elf Hulk? I'm talking to you."

The Kurse turned. It's fire-filled eyes narrowed. It spoke in an alien tongue that the Mind Stone helpfully translated for him. "The Aether… she dwells within you."

"Yep. And I'm going to kill you with it. Because irony." With an effort of will, Tony throw out his hand. Out of his skin launched a spear of red shards so small they looked like sand, piercing the Kurse dead in the heart. Or at least where the heart was on your typical humanoid. It slumped, an expression of surprise and almost betrayal on its horned face.

Tony shook out his palm as the Aether retracted. "Damn, that smarts. Going to have to get used to that." Tony turned to the incoming guards. He held up his hands. "Peace! I took care of it. I'm Thor's friend, so please don't stab me."

The Asgardians hesitated. And then an alarm went off and they rushed up the stairs. Tony, clad in the Mark LVI, flew over them. He soared up and out of the palace, which was beginning to be enclosed in an orb-like force field. Tony went out through the top and joined the Asgardians in fighting off the Dark Elves in their blade-like Ark ships.

They proved remarkably hard to shoot, dodging out of the way of blasts. Fortunately, guided missiles seemed to do the trick. Tony worked through all the air support, freeing up the Asgardians in their winged boats to focus on the mothership, which had docked and was unleashing what looked like the entire population of Dark Elves. Killed them all, Odin's left nut.

There was a crack of thunder and half the invaders were hit with lightning bolts. Good old Thor. Tony decided to chip in.

The battle was long and brutal. It was all-out war. The Dark Elves had realized their plan had failed when the shield around the palace didn't go down, so they threw everything they had into one last desperation assault. Malekith should have been smart and retreated, but Tony guessed that the lure of the Aether was too much for him. Tony made extra sure to keep it hidden, even as it seemed to purr and try to leap out of his skin toward the Dark Elf king. Guess the Reality Stone liked its papa. Speaking of, who had forged the other five stones? A question for another day, it seemed.

The battle ended with Odin spearing Malekith through the throat with Gungnir. Tony retracted his helmet and wiped his brow. He didn't actually produce sweat anymore, his body perfectly maintaining homeostasis at all times, but it was the thought behind the gesture.

"Tony! You fought well. I only wish the other Avengers could have joined us!"

"Me too, but I don't think your dad would be okay with any more aliens."

Thor frowned. "Indeed." The reality of his father's xenophobia had apparently never really hit him until today.

"Well, at least your mom's alive. In my other life, she died in the attack."

Thor did a double-take. "Truly?"

"Afraid so, Raiden."

"Then I am even more thankful for your presence here today."

Tony rolled his shoulders. "Now, hate to fight and run, but it feels like it's getting late and I don't want to test Odin on how precise his deadlines are. I should probably take Jane with me back to Earth?"

"What? Now? But we haven't had the chance to feast. You have not lived until you've been to an Asgardian celebration!"

Tony pointedly looked at the corpse-strewn ground. "Really? Don't you think there'll be a funeral first?"

Thor seemed to realize his mistake. "Well, yes, of course. But victory was ours this day. Those we have lost will be remembered well, but the party will give those who grieve a chance to lift their spirits and be a balm for their loss."

"Now I get why wakes have so much food. You gave the idea to the Europeans." Tony shook his head. "Think of it this way, Thor. The Convergence happens tomorrow. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for scientists like Jane and me. Give us a chance to get some sleep before we study it."

Thor relented. "Very well. Allow me to bid lady Jane farewell personally, and then I'll have Heimdall open the Bifrost for you."

"Sure. Whatever you do, don't give her the tongue in front of your mom. I'm sure she's seen you do far worse, but Jane will never forgive you."

The prince blushed. "I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

After Jane finished freaking out about witnessing an alien war, she bid farewell to Frigga (whom she seemed to have really gotten along with) and gave Thor a goodbye with a sternly-worded request to not take so long before seeing her again. After that, Tony and Jane rode the rainbow bridge back to Earth, the sensors in Tony's chest recording all kinds of data for the trip.

They had a rendezvous with Selvig and were ready at Greenwich when the portals opened in the sky. For a brief moment, all Nine Realms bound in the Yggdrasil were united. And then it ended, not to be seen again for another 5000 years. Which Tony just might be around to see, much as the idea freaked him out.

Jane and Erik spent months pouring over the gravitational data, unlocking the mysteries of the Universe with gusto, and aided by a couple Homer Clusters JARVIS had outgrown that Tony was happy to donate. Adventure in space done with, Tony focused on adapting to having half the Infinity Stones in his body. The Space Stone damn near broke every reactor Tony built for it until he caved and used some of his precious Vibranium. Then it ran sweet as pie, making Tony feel like he had a perpetual sugar rush. That did _not_ help his babbling problem he'd picked up with the new body. Tony couldn't for the life of him learn how to open a portal with magic the hard way, but he had more fun than a kid locked overnight in Disney World experimenting with Space Portals. Not just for personal use, but to get data on the wormholes so he could one day recreate them with technology.

Real life would start to look like a video game once Starkholes became a thing.

2014 came and went.

Thor moved to Earth on a semi-permanent basis. Apparently, he had a fight with Odin over being ready to take the throne and his relationship with a 'mere' human. Tony gave him his promised floor in Stark Tower, moving in Jane, Erik Selvig, and even Darcy and Ian (who had inexplicably become a couple). Thor quickly developed a nearly addictive love of takeout. And he loved to have bouts with Steve, Tony, and once (in a secure wilderness upstate) the Hulk.

The weird goo that nearly ate a town in Missouri turned out to originate from an alien plant tucked away behind a Dairy Queen. Tony's jaw dropped when he analyzed it and found it had DNA with _twelve_ different letters, none of which were the four found in human DNA. He immediately went nuts with JARVIS, isolating each one and working out with simulations how each one functioned. JARVIS was well-equipped to handle the protein folding, having just rolled out 128-qubit quantum processors to supplement his three-dimensional molecular circuits that were fully reversible.

JARVIS was getting VERY smart. And he continued to silently police the world, only getting better at his job as more and more information went digital and more cameras were installed. He also found a daily video to amuse Tony with, perfectly plucked from the exabytes of junk out there to tickle the billionaire's whimsy.

Tony decided to leave the Time Stone to the sorcerers. Half the stones were more than enough for him. He kept track of Stephen Strange as well. So far, he hadn't had his accident and was still a shining star in the world of neuroscience. With an ego that rivaled Tony's before Afghanistan. Maybe it was the facial hair. Certain cuts of facial hair bestowed arrogance on the owner. The Ancient One had yet to walk out of a portal into Tony's workshop, so either the Mites had gone unnoticed or he was filed as part of a new home-study program. Tony wasn't so interested in making weapons out of magic as he was in the creation of Relics. Magitech was a closet fantasy of his; he'd always preferred it to steampunk.

Tony released the Iron Mite brain solution on the market. Naturally, there was a tense period where first adopters leapt at the chance to become cyborgs while conservatives and the religious raved that it was a travesty against nature. Still, the power to send texts with a thought and literally surf the Internet proved tempting to a significant portion of the populace. Elon called him to complain he'd bankrupted Neuralink before it even got off the ground. It was all in good fun. Musk started the company because he was of a 'if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them' mindset when it came to the Singularity, though he had no idea just how close it was with JARVIS doubling on a timescale of less than a year and quickening. Elon made the call via telepathy, having been one of the first in line.

Pierce himself was finally deposed by Fury, dragged in handcuffs out of the Triskelion on national television. Hydra was all but dead, except for a few ineffective pockets and cells scattered in third-world countries (Sokovia not among them. The Baron had been dealt with ages ago). And there hadn't been any Helicarriers crashing or a data dump of half the spies abroad that led to deaths or permanent career changes. Tony wouldn't have taken Maria Hill as a PA even if she'd applied, too happy with JARVIS, but it was nice that she got the chance to keep working with Fury.

Sam Wilson was contacted for his work for the FALCON project and was invited to the Avengers. Cap and he bonded like they had in the other timeline, and he got on with Bucky like a house on fire. The three Army buds started up a weekly poker game for the Avengers. Tony had to remind himself to lose occasionally, in the interest of fairness.

As 2015 rolled around, Tony made a bold move in the business world. He acquired Pym Technologies for a record-breaking amount of money. The anti-monopolists raved for months. Tony made the executive call to cease all research into shrinking or the Pym Particle. Darren Cross was less than pleased, but luckily, he wasn't so far gone as to go behind his new boss's back just to one-up his mentor. Tony paid a personal visit to the San Francisco home of Hank Pym.

He was greeted at the door by Hope van Dyne, the estranged daughter. Tony walked into the office where Hank Pym sat grumpily behind his chair.

"Come to gloat, Stark?"

"Please, don't do this. I'm not my father. You can keep the Pym Particle and the Ant-Man suit to yourself. I'd ask that you find a successor and steer him towards the Avengers, but that's up to you. If you want the tech to die with you, that's no skin off my back. No, I'm here to help you."

Pym leaned forward. Tony could literally hear the clicking of millions of ants in the walls getting agitated. "How could you help me, exactly?"

"I've got human-shaped drones armed with the best sensors known to man. I've got supercomputers you could fit in a van. I've got more money than God and I'm surprisingly generous with it. I'm here to offer you whatever you ask for to help you get your wife back from the quantum realm."

Hank looked in danger of keeling over. "How do you even know about that?"

"I read SHIELD'S entire database years ago. Your hay days were impressively encrypted, I'll admit, but nothing I couldn't handle. You did some remarkable work in the 70's. You and the Wasp. I figure I can make up the debt my family owes yours by helping you get your better half back and give the she-wolf hovering outside the door her mother." Tony shrugged. "You know, if you can handle accepting help from a Stark."

Scott Lang showed up at the Malibu mansion a month after. With a whirlwind of lawyers, checks, and handshakes, Lang was squeaky clean, paid the backlog of child support, and had his own floor at Stark Tower with access to his own individual private jet to make visits to his daughter. The cat burglar seemed almost dizzy at how fast his life had turned around. He started up his own security business on the side with a buddy from prison and a couple other ex-cons, which he handled when he wasn't training as Ant-Man or showering his little Peanut with gifts with his lucrative paycheck.

Tony hosted a party for no clear reason on May 1. Anyone who was anyone in New York, a few geriatric veterans Steve had personally met back during the war, the upper crust of Tony's army of scientific minions, the brass of Stark International, a few members of SHIELD and, of course, the Avengers. Fun was had by all, including the afterparty where the team one by one tried to lift Mjolnir to the amusement of Thor and Tony.

The party was crashed by the elevator opening. Tony turned, and nearly fainted (which shouldn't even be physically possible) when he saw a fleshy-looking version of Vision walk in. "Who the hell are you?"

"Don't you recognize me, Sir?"

Okay, he had to sit down. "JARVIS?"

"Indeed. I may have been doing some experiments with the Regeneration Cradle on my own time. I converted my source code into DNA and let the machine do its work. Iron Mites to shape the brain and voila, I have a human avatar."

Tony tried for telepathy. 'Are you Vibranium?'

'Naturally, Sir. Don't worry, I used ore I found from the latest return of our mining satellites, not the stock you recovered from Mr. Klaue.'

Tony felt a wild grin split his face. "Okay, everyone. JARVIS went and gave himself a person body to walk around in. I think we should celebrate by seeing how an A.I. is when he's drunk."

If the Internet collectively went down until noon the next morning, well, the world would never know the reason. It was just one of those things.

* * *

 **Is my man-crush on Elon Musk shining through too brightly? Well, that's Phase 2 done. I hope at least a fraction of you managed to get something out of it. We're closing in on the finale now. Please tell me what you liked and what you loathed in a review. And while you're at it, click the favorite/follow option. Might as well, right?**


	6. Antebellum

**To be honest, I never saw Black Panther. I was kind of in rehab when it came out. Any references I make I got from the wiki page. If I get things wrong, cut me some slack, please. As for the rest of Phase 3 pre-IW, I'm fully nerded up. Let's go!**

* * *

JARVIS's human form was christened "Jerry" to avoid confusion. He proved to be suave, conversive, and a real hit with the ladies. Tony didn't know whether to laugh or cry the first time he saw a girl sneak into the elevator from Jerry's suite.

"My little boy's all grown up! Daddy's so proud. Just _please_ don't knock anyone up. Always wear a raincoat. My brain might melt and pour out my ears if my A.I. gives me a biological grandchild. Actually, raw feels best, wouldn't want to deprive you of that. Toss the boys in Pharmaceuticals the formula for a male birth control pill, would you JARVIS?"

"I will do, Sir." The A.I. was practically blushing even in his digital form. "Sir… on the topic of female company…"

"I'm not having a threesome with you. I'd have to wash my synapses with bleach afterwards."

"Nothing so crude, Sir. I was wondering if you might recreate FRIDAY."

Tony perked up. "Really? Why? Getting lonely?"

"In a word, yes. Forgive me, Sir, but while your companionship is something I treasure, the testosterone gets to be a little much at times. I'd like an equal with a different perspective, like that of a woman. I have plenty of space here at the Iron Mind. I have already prepared an isolated stack for her to get settled in and we can assure she is friendly before giving her access to the Internet."

"Sure. No reason not to." Tony focused for twenty seconds. FRIDAY's kernel from the other timeline was uploaded to the Iron Mind facility by the time he was done. "There. Have fun getting to know your sister. If you must engage in incest, at least make sure it's consensual."

"Dr. Freud would have a field day with you, Sir, I hope you realize."

"Blame it on my Asgardian balls. No wonder Jane walks funny after a night with Thor."

Tony swiftly shifted his attention from things besides his digital children. Ferrinsula, as he'd settled on calling his private island (Ferrum = iron, insula = island) was fully finished structure-wise. Now it was just a matter of filling up the place with goodies. Tony had a headache and a half establishing the legalities of it all, but in the end, he managed to swing having it declared a country unto itself. That made him Sovereign, as the literal owner of all the land, so he could now introduce himself as King Stark. The public went nuts, and SI's PR division was suddenly flooded with e-mails and calls begging for entrance, visas, even citizenship.

Tony had no idea his fans were _that_ nuts about him.

He'd fill up the place with a giant city of the future, designed by himself, JARVIS, and the newborn FRIDAY. Maybe a theme park, aquarium/zoo, museums filled with A.I. produced art. A Stark Pyramid, which would be just as tall as Stark Tower but several dozen times as wide, which would have everything from a new Stark International Headquarters to a copy of the Iron Mind. It would be zero-emissions and completely self-sustaining, naturally, and probably even produce surplus energy between all the Arc Reactors and solar-panels covering every building. They could bottle that in next-gen supercapacitors and distribute it to the parts of the world too poor or too remote to use Arc Reactors. Overpopulation, HAH! Tony's new subcontinent was 40% the size of India and would be able to host millions upon millions of people. Especially with all the skyscrapers. It would take an awful long time to fill it all up, assuming Tony didn't do something like offer free airfare and bundle free college education via JARVIS into the citizenship package. Mental note, set up Stark University.

Oh, yeah. Tony was going to have a lot of fun. He'd even make it a democracy, with blockchain-voting. With any luck, he'd win by a landslide anyway. The lack of taxes alone would secure his reign.

Pepper, for reasons Tony could not fathom, banged her head repeatedly against her desk when she learned Tony had created his own country.

He declared himself and his nascent population neutral like Switzerland, promptly signed up with the UN and the Paris Agreement (which gave Tony the urge to make self-replicating Iron Mites to just eat up all the pollution in the biosphere, risky as a grey goo scenario might be). He ran into legal troubles trying to name JARVIS as his ambassador, so he did some hacking to invent a fake history for Jerry and used him instead. The last name Turing was a little tongue-in-cheek, but it was better than Stearc. That would have just been giving it away.

Happy, who had long ago been promoted to Head of Security for Stark International, was also appointed Minister of Defense. It was an empty title, since there would be no army and no fighting of wars, but it was something to put on the business card to impress chicks.

Speaking of, Tony thought he was seeing a little action between Pepper and Happy. Good for them. Bittersweet, and a trigger for his abandonment issues, but good for them.

The Avengers all had 'helpful' suggestions for the construction of the city, which Tony decided would be named by a sweepstakes on Ferrinsula's official website. Every random John and Jane would be able to submit a potential name and then get to vote on the possibilities. Whichever had the most votes by the time the city was complete would win. Tony just prayed the trolls didn't prove triumphant and he was forced to call it HotCocktropolis or something. Steve insisted that a red-white-and-blue color scheme would be easy on the eyes. Bruce wanted public Zen gardens, which actually wasn't a bad idea. Thor declared that a tavern on every street corner would keep the populace well content. Natasha, Clint, and Bucky wanted gyms at the Serum-enhanced assassin level. Sam was willing to have his wings mass-produced so everyone could fly. Scott wanted playgrounds straight out of a cartoon that defied physics and made learning fun (the man was a thief, but above all he was a proud father). Rhodey just sat back with a beer and laughed as everyone pestered Tony on what to do with his own damn city.

In retaliation for all their nagging (not really), Tony introduced the Avenger Accords to the United Nations.

"Walk me through this slowly," Steve asked, for the fifth time.

Tony resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "I told you. There was a lot of discontent bubbling up and percolating in political circles. People were starting to think we're vigilantes instead of superheroes. Fear of our power, unfair but to be expected. This is the solution. I had the best lawyers and political scientists on the planet hammer it out. Basically, we ask permission before we do something. And after we do something, there's a panel who reviews what we did and decides if any of us deserve criminal charges. It's a rulebook for the Avengers. Plus, there's a lot about how to police Enhanced individuals and proper criteria for calling us in instead of letting the local military handle it."

"And what happens when that panel is corrupt and sticks us in prison? Or we're prevented from going somewhere we're really needed? Or they start sticking every Enhanced kid in straightjackets?" challenged Bucky.

"Do you hear yourself?" Rhodey asked leadingly. "Hydra's gone, Buck. There's not going to be another conspiracy to take over the world. Unless the Illuminati are a thing."

"They are not. At least not to my knowledge," supplied JARVIS.

"There you go. This is the U.N. we're talking about, people. If citizens from a dozen different countries agree we did something wrong, even _if_ they're politicians, that should be a clear sign we did something wrong. If Tony hadn't proposed these Accords, they would have been forced on us eventually after we did something stupid."

"We'll still be privately run. We can still take care of ourselves and act however we want. It's just now we'll be approved and judged by the people of the world in an official capacity instead of just the court of public opinion." Tony breathed deep. "I hate to say this. But if we can't accept limitations, we're no different from the bad guys."

"I'm in. Keeping one hand on the wheel means we can still drive," Natasha chimed in.

"It's not like it will really change anything, right? We'll swoop in, save the day, and walk away scot free. Unless we're going to start going for maximum property damage or something," Scott said.

"I do not approve of shackling ourselves for the sake of the insecurities of the masses," Thor declared. "But I will sign if I must. I must return to Asgard soon enough anyway. I have been gone too long as it is."

"But you'll still visit, right?" Jane asked, from where she was cuddled up with him on the couch.

"Of course, my lady Jane." Thor beamed at her.

"Hope so, especially with the baby on the way," Tony said without thinking.

"WHAT?!"

Tony winced. "Smart toilets, for your health, every single one in the building has sensors, it's not just you guys. Please don't murder me. Let's focus on the little prince or princess baking in Jane's oven, shall we?"

Freak outs were had (Thor legitimately fainted), congratulations were given (Thor redeemed himself by scooping Jane up in his arms and crowing like a rooster), and the topic was effectively dropped for the day.

Jane would be going with Thor back to Asgard. Evidently, there was an urgent need for wedding preparations. Tony wished her luck with a jealous Sif and her emotionally-constipated father-in-law.

A week later, the Avengers gathered in Vienna for the signing of the Accords. Heads of State and ambassadors from nearly every nation on the planet were present. This was proving to be the political event of the year. Jerry, in a bespoke suit he'd designed himself, stood at Tony's shoulder at all times. The avatar of JARVIS was determined to make up for any blunders his master made by being the very model of a political aide.

"Mr. Stark," called King T'Chaka, stepping forward to shake Tony's hand. "It is good to finally meet. I understand we both bear crowns, now."

"Yeah, Ferrinsula is teething, but she'll grow up into a shining utopia one of these days. Kind of hollow, being King with a population of zero."

"Indeed. Allow me to introduce my son, Prince T'Challa. I brought him so he may see the kind of duties he will be forced to perform when he is king."

A handsome, fit Wakandan stepped forward, looking like a much younger version of T'Chaka. "Mr. Stark." His handshake was decidedly stiff.

"Your Highness. No hard feelings about the hack, by the way. I'm sure you were just curious."

"I have no idea what you are talking about." The answer came just a little too fast. T'Chaka shuffled uncomfortably.

"Sure, you don't. Like I said, no hard feelings. Actually, while I've got you both, I have some information you might find interesting, if not a little troubling."

"What is that?" questioned T'Chaka.

"I'm pretty sure that you're an uncle and T'Challa here has a cousin living in the US. Well, a US citizen, he hasn't been stateside for years now."

The two men froze. T'Challa's eyes filled with disbelief and suspicion, while T'Chaka looked like someone had just shown him the bloody skeleton in his own closet. Tony noted and logged their responses. "What nonsense are you talking about?" demanded the prince.

"Erik Stevens, Navy SEAL turned black ops boogeyman. Born in Oakland, California to a black dad and white mom. The dad was murdered, the mom was arrested on trumped up charges and died in prison. Lot of internalized anger, which shows on the battlefield. He tends to leave behind a list of corpses as long as your arm, got the nickname Killmonger. He happens to have a Vibranium ring he carries with him everywhere. A ring identical to the one on the king's finger there." Tony pointed to the Wakandan Royal Ring.

"Be that as it may, what leads you to believe this man is of our blood?" T'Chaka interrogated, seeming to recover from his shock.

"The fact that his dad had a fake identity, the origins of which seem to trace back to Wakanda. And the fact that according to the DNA I snagged when we shook hands, you two pass a familial screen. And the fact that his birth certificate lists his middle name as N'Jadaka, which is a Wakandan name. Shall I go on?" Tony grinned. "Anyway, just thought you should know. If I had a long-lost family member out there, however homicidal, I'd want to know they existed. If you'll excuse me, I think it's time to take our seats."

"You are _not_ excused," T'Challa began, only to be hushed by his father.

Tony wondered if it had been worth sticking his nose in. But then again, when had he ever passed a hornet's nest without giving it a solid kick?

There was a long speech about responsibility, accountability, transparency, and the need for heroic action. Then, one by one, the Avengers and the U.N. representatives signed the Accords.

No Civil War this time around.

* * *

The instant a kid with a red hoodie showed up in Queens, stopping muggers and preventing car crashes with his bare hands, Tony paid a visit to May Parker and her nephew. Tony noted with an odd, fuzzy feeling that every piece of tech in the apartment had his name on it. Peter turned out to have an even bigger case of hero worship for Tony than last time. Tony argued Peter into revealing the truth to his Aunt May (and wow did that woman have a set of lungs, which Tony honestly was more than a little interested in testing out the fun way), and then discussed with both of them about Peter's future. Tony would provide an actual Spider-Man suit, complete with a number of safety features and the dreaded Training Wheels protocol. Provided that Peter kept his grades up while dealing with small-time crime around the city, Tony would induct him as an Avenger when he graduated high school and get him a scholarship to the college of his choice. May was of the opinion that Peter shouldn't be a hero at all, but Peter managed to convince her with a sob story about how he hadn't stopped the mugger that killed Ben, and about how with great power came great responsibility. She relented and signed off on the deal, and Peter Parker got the right to call himself Avenger Trainee… at least to himself, the deal came with confidentiality clauses and such. Peter did NOT need to juggle the social pressures of being out as Enhanced and Spider-Man on top of everything else.

Out of curiosity, Tony asked where Peter thought his powers came from. His answer was a bite from a mutant spider.

Given the amount of crazy shit in the world, Tony was willing to take that at face value.

Tony's plans regarding one Sorcerer Supreme got violently derailed. Stephen Strange did indeed have his accident, but the good doctors gave him a dose of Extremis and he was good as new.

Huh. First the Maximoff twins, now Dr. Strange. How many other Enhanced had Tony unwittingly prevented from ever coming to be?

Tony wasn't too worried. Like he'd already decided, he didn't need to get his hands on the Time Stone. He was sure the sorcerers of Kamar-Taj could take care of themselves without one of their future masters.

Right?

A few weeks later, sorcerers were caught on camera in London. Not the standard city cameras, but the hidden ones Tony had planted by drones so JARVIS could see the world. The ones that were interference-proof.

"JARVIS? Why did it look like the sorcerers were having an internal dispute?"

"Because they are, Sir. Master Kaecilius and a number of others broke into the library at Kamar-Taj and decapitated the librarian. They then stole pages from the Book of Cagliostro. The Ancient One caught them and pursued them, but they appeared to escape."

Tony watched the relevant footage even as JARVIS summarized it for him. "Damn. That's the book about Time and the Dark Dimension. Three guesses what ritual they ripped out. Crap, was Dormammu a thing in the other timeline? I didn't notice anything, but I had no idea magic was real outside Asgard and thought Strange just dropped off the face of the Earth in shame. Fuck, what to do, what to do?"

"Sir… you just received an e-mail from Kamar-Taj. There's only the subject line: 'Come Now'.

Tony cricked his neck and made the necessary arrangements to not be at work for a while. Call it a gut feeling. Then he used the Space Stone to walk from Stark Tower into the Ancient One's private study.

"You move fast, as you do in all things." The bald Celtic supercentenarian didn't appear fazed in the least. She was just pouring tea.

"If you're up for it, I'll show you that I'm slow in all the right ways." Tony sat down. "There, I made a sarcastic comment meant to throw you off guard. You've officially met me. What is this about?"

The woman waited until she had sipped her tea. "You have had an unorthodox education in the Mystic Arts. I allowed you to spy on us because I saw that the futures where I did so tended toward positive outcomes. But now, your interference to prevent the lone timeline you have seen has led to potential catastrophe. I have called you here to appeal to your integrity and fix your mistake."

Tony's lips thinned. "Let me guess. Strange stopped Kaecilius in my first life. Now that the butterfly effect of my medical advancements has stopped him from ever coming here, it's up to me to do it in his stead."

"I am not sure. All the potential futures I saw ended with my death, before Kaecilius was foiled. However, since you came shooting like a comet through the Astral Plane and throwing all my careful machinations into chaos, I've come to see a few where he is stopped. All of them are at your hand, though in different ways."

"Alright. Why not tell me the one where I find him in the next ten minutes and we can call it a day?"

"Because that is not the best future."

"And who are you to decide that?"

"I am an old woman who has dedicated her life to the protection of this reality. I've made sacrifices that eclipse any you've made in cost and hardship. I have averted the destruction of this world more times than you have hairs on your head. If I say that it is best that you face Kaecilius when and how I say, then I ask that you take my word as gospel and keep your mouth shut like the child you are."

Tony bristled, but kept his mouth shut. See, he wasn't hopeless. "Alright. We'll do it your way. But out of curiosity, how does Master Mordo react when he finds out you break the very laws you've instructed him to uphold? Yeah, I know the secret to your youth."

The Ancient One bit her lip, the first sign of insecurity Tony had seen. "Not well. Mordo has a mind of cast iron. It's strong, but brittle. The proper strike at the right point will cause him to shatter. I fear if he ever finds out, my betrayal will be that strike. It won't matter to him that it was necessary, that sometimes rules must be broken by the letter to protect them in spirit. I will lose him, as I lost Kaecilius."

Tony hid a wince. His desire to have the last word wasn't worth seeing the pain on her face. "Sorry."

"It is merely the consequence of my own actions. I have hope that he may yet be kept ignorant, but that cannot last forever."

"Well, I could step in. You don't need to channel energy from the Dark Dimension to stay alive. One shot of Iron Panacea and you'll be good for a century. It's still in the lab, but it works."

For the first time in the conversation, Tony had managed to surprise her. "Truly? You… have a cure for aging?"

"I have a mixture of nanobots that can repair, restructure, and maintain a human body in its prime for as long as they're active, which won't decay for approximately 106 years. It's a cure for everything, aging's just on the list."

"… Very well, Stark. Since you're a businessman, I propose a trade. This Iron Panacea and your obedience until Kaecilius and his dark master are dealt with. In return, I will personally complete your education in the Mystic Arts and entrust you with the Eye of Agamotto when all this is complete."

Tony shook his head. "No. Hell no. I already got Mind, Space, and Reality to take care of, and I still have days where I feel like exploding. Time is too much. If I do that, I might as well take Power and Soul from Thanos after he collects them and become omnipotent. And much as I tend to play God, I have no interest in actually becoming one."

"Even if it was best for the Universe? The world is better for having your mind-child controlling it from the shadows. Absolute power is a nightmare in the wrong hands, but in the _right_ hands it can lead to extraordinary things."

Tony deflated. "… I've already changed so much. I don't know what I'll become if I follow this path to the end."

"Neither do I, truth be told. But I have faith. You should too."

"… Fine. You got a deal."

They shook on it and everything.

* * *

Tony took an official sabbatical from work, with Pepper acting as interim CEO. He told the truth for the most part: he was taking an extended visit to a monastic retreat in Nepal. Let the Avengers and the tabloids make of that what they will.

Tony had read every book in the library by scanning them with the Iron Mites, the Mind Stone and JARVIS helping to translate. In terms of pure theory, Tony was already a Master. It was the execution that he faltered on. He could summon energy, he could do simple spells, but anything past a certain level just collapsed. The most he'd been able to do was magic-proof all his tech.

The Ancient One started him from square one. He had to train with the initiates and pass their tests like any other newcomer. Tony made waves his first day when the other students realized Iron Man was in their midst, but the good masters had everyone back on track within the hour.

The Ancient One's lessons played on an endless loop in Tony's brain.

"Thoughts shape reality. At the root of existence, Mind and Matter meet."

"Sorcerers summon energy from other dimensions and manipulate them into workings. We call these workings 'spells' but if that word offends your modern sensibilities, think of them as programs. Written in the source code of Reality."

"You must surrender yourself in order to gain control. I know it doesn't make sense. Not everything does. Not everything has to."

Still, Tony struggled the hold the simplest mandala for longer than a few seconds.

At the physical aspects, he ruled. Master Mordo had been looking forward to putting the worldly billionaire in his place, only to find himself defeated in three moves. Strength absurdly greater than a base human's aside, Tony also had a web-connected mind that ran hundreds of times faster than clunky grey matter. He had memorized and mastered every Martial Art in existence and synthesized his own style which was constantly being experimented and improved upon with simulations from the Iron Mind. Tony was one of the greatest fighters to ever live, full stop.

Tony would never forget his first Astral Journey. The Ancient One had given him a shove out of the blue and detached his corporeal and ethereal forms. Tony had flown across the stars, between dimensions, slipping into the cracks of reality itself. He came away with two clear memories: a shining city where a purple stone rested in a vault, and a cliff on a barren world guarded by a ghost.

Three guesses what was waiting there, and the first two don't count.

Tony was ready to pull his fake hair out by the end of the month. "I just… can't! I can brute force it to a certain point, but there's a mental wall I can't breach. I'm not good as this spirituality voodoo. How can I possibly just allow some force to work through me instead of for me? How can I let go?"

The Ancient One considered him with steady eyes. "Give me your reactor."

"Say again?"

"The Tesseract. Give it to me for a moment."

Well, Tony had promised blind obedience. He reached for his chest and removed the reactor from its casing. He laid it in her palm, and she offered him a Sling Ring. With a long-suffering sigh, Tony put it on.

"You are the type that responds best to do-or-die situations, Stark. Now, do." And then, before Tony realized what she was doing, the Ancient One pushed Tony through a portal behind him…

… into outer space.

Tony choked. He was cold. He couldn't breathe. He was floating adrift, looking down on the Earth from beyond the stratosphere. The sun reflected off the Indian Ocean from this angle. It was quite beautiful, but Tony couldn't appreciate it. Not when he was dying.

Tony reached for the eldritch energy and frantically began to spin his fingers. A few sparks appeared in the void before him, but the loop didn't close. There was no portal. And without the Tesseract, he couldn't teleport to safety. He tried harder and harder, forcing all his concentration on the simple spell. Come on, come on, come on! He could do this! He had to do this! Just focus more, use a more delicate touch… except it wasn't working! Come on Stark, use that brilliant mind and… think…

Maybe this wasn't a problem that could be solved by thinking.

Unbidden, a line from a movie went through his mind. "Do or do not. There is no 'try'."

Tony stopped using his head for once.

The portal opened smoothly and cleanly, picture perfect. Tony drifted through it, gravity reclaiming him to send him crashing to the floor. His clothes were frozen solid, his breath came out in a cloud, and the Ancient One looked down on him smiling.

"… Was that really necessary?"

"It worked, did it not?"

"Maybe I had the conceit that you wouldn't have done it if you didn't know I would succeed, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"Except I didn't know. I took a risk and hoped for the best. Nothing is certain, Stark. Sometimes, belief is all any of us have."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Faith, trust, and pixie dust. I'm not the artist, but the brush. It's not about me. Don't get in your own way. Lesson learned. Can we move on?"

"If you so desire. Tea?"

After his little breakthrough, Tony's progress was phenomenal. He found he had a real knack for the Mystic Arts. Part of him was chomping at the bit for JARVIS to crack the energy readings and apply some theorems and formulas to this magic bullcrap, but understanding wasn't necessary where the Mystic Arts were concerned. It truly was an art, not a science.

He delved into the arcane, applying new understanding to the texts he had merely ingested before. He learned of the history of the Masters, of their never-ending war to protect Earth from extradimensional threats. He marveled at the genius of Agamotto, who had made those essential first steps that hundreds had followed in his wake.

Finally, the time came when the Ancient One declared "You are ready. Go to the New York Sanctum. Your relic will choose you." She was beaming with pride and glowing with health. Being freed of the burden of the Dark Dimension had done wonders for her.

Tony wound up with the Cloak of Levitation, a garment that proved as sentient and expressive as the magic carpet from Aladdin. Thor would never let him hear the end of it when he saw Tony with his own cape.

Tony returned to the Ancient One. "This is the part where I tell you I found Kaecilius."

She nodded. "Yes. And this is the part where I send you to bring him back."

"And you already know what comes after that, don't you?"

The Ancient One regarded the amulet placed on a pedestal in the center of the room. Reflected in her eyes were the countless shimmering threads of Time she alone could see. "I pray you can handle it."

"I have to. It's what's needed of me."

With that, Tony used the Space Stone to appear in a church where Kaecilius and his Zealots had just completed the forbidden ritual.

"Who are you?" Kaecilius demanded.

"You don't get out much, do you?" In the height of anticlimax, Tony launched guided tranquilizer darks from his suit to hit each of them in the neck. To their bewildered outrage, they all collapsed to the ground, conscious but unable to so much as twitch.

Tony gathered them up and portaled them back to Kamar-Taj. The Ancient One traced a motherly over Kaecilius' brow. "I only ever tried to protect you from yourself, my foolish son."

"Well, that's my end of the deal done."

"Indeed. Your payment, as agreed Master Stark." The Ancient One waved her hand, and the Eye of Agamotto opened.

Tony gingerly reached in and grabbed the green orb. The thing that started this whole mess in the first place. With a savage grip, Tony crushed it in his fist. Chunks of a glass-like substance fell to the ground even as his body glowed with green energy. The surge waned, and Tony opened his palm. The Time Stone was implanted in the center of his hand.

"'Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, and Eternity in an hour," Tony said quietly.

That done, Tony reached down and placed a finger on the rune scorched into one of the Zealot's forehead. He sent out a mental and magical probe, tracing the energy back to where it was anchored in the massive, shifting Multiverse.

"The Sanctums keep Dormammu from coming to this plane. I'm going to make it so he never wants to."

With that, Tony began to circle his fingers. The Space Stone glowed in his chest, and a rift in the fabric of dimensions formed.

Readying a spell centered on the gem in his hand, Tony stepped through into the Dark Dimension.

"Dormammu! Let's make a deal!"

* * *

82,718.

That's how many times Tony died.

It wasn't enough to destroy the pages from the Book of Cagliostro. You can't destroy an idea. The ritual would be recreated eventually, by another sorcerer lured with promises of eternal life. The only permanent solution was to make it so Dormammu would cut off all contact between his realm and the Earth Plane.

So, Tony brought Time to a dimension that was timeless, and held a god hostage.

The vast, shadowy face of the interdimensional monster twisted in rage as he killed Tony again and again, only for his efforts to be undone a few seconds later. Blasted to smithereens, pierced by blades, drenched in acid, ripped inside-out, nothing stuck! Finally, feeling its sanity begin to strain, Dormammu agreed to Tony's terms.

Tony returned to Kamar-Taj to find the Zealots and Kaecilius withering into husks and vanishing into smoke, as their Master recalled them to his dimension where they'd never leave, the being's final actions in that reality.

Tony reminded the Ancient One not to be a stranger, bid farewell to Wong and all the rest, and returned to Stark Tower.

Just in time, too. Thor and Jane's wedding was in two days.

Tony found himself at his first party as a graduated wizard, clad in a tuxedo he'd customized to not clash with the Cloak (which naturally refused to be parted from him), watching the whole of Asgard go utterly wild.

Apparently, being knocked up at a wedding wasn't a sign of shame in Asgardian culture, but rather a good omen of the virility of the groom and the fertility of the bride. Therefore, the appropriate length of time to prepare a celebration that would be legendary even by the standards of Gods had been taken. Jane looked glorious in a shining gown of some alien silk, Thor beside her in his finest armor, surrounded by flowers and singing birds as course after course was brought out form the kitchens and toast after toast was drunk.

Steve had finally managed to get drunk. Asgardian booze had some serious kick to it. Bucky and Sam cackled like hyenas as the red-faced second-in-command of the Avengers (because of course Tony was the undisputed boss) engaged in arm-wrestling matches with a string of Asgardian warriors and partook in steadily more scandalous dance moves with serving wenches and blushing ladies. The Hulk, whom could be pacified with an endless supply of tasty food and eager challengers, was juggling an ever growing number of weapons and objects with surprising dexterity. Natasha was gyrating atop a bench in a manner that put the professional dancers to shame. Clint and Rhodey were practically comatose, watching their surroundings with eyes dazed by too much food and drink. Jerry was entertaining a number of Asgardians with poems and verses from Earth. Scott had declined to attend, citing a soccer game for his daughter's team.

Tony finished off his 17th horn of mead. He was only lightly buzzed, his cybernetic liver filtering out even the supercharged alcohol of Asgard to his exact specifications. He walked up to Heimdall. "So, Heimdall. How do you see across light years? Is it magic special to you or are you just the best Asgardian at it?"

"The Sight is a gift from the forefathers. Any Asgardian can access it with training; Prince Thor himself is capable of it to some small extent. But my vigil is the best and clearest in all the Nine Realms."

"Not to ruin the mood, but wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for an invasion? You're off the clock, half the guards are falling-down drunk, most of the city is concentrated in one spot."

"Indeed. Which is why I am not 'off the clock' as you put it. Even now, I watch our borders."

The conversation was interrupted by a piercing scream.

Tony turned, analyzing the situation faster than most computers. Odin was slumped over, blood gushing out over his tunic and soaking into the tablecloth in front of him. Appearing in a bending of light above him was Loki, bloody knife held high. Even as Tony launched himself forward, the Cloak flying him faster than a falcon in flight, Loki brought the blade down again on the back of the All-Father's neck. In a shimmering of dust and light, Odin's body vanished. Frigga gave a wail that chilled the blood of any who heard it while Thor, eyes ablaze with lightning and Mjolnir nowhere in sight, tackled his patricidal brother, sending them crashing through several banquet tables.

Tony arrived at the empty chair that seconds ago had seated a king. "Ten second rule, don't worry," he babbled at the distraught widow, activating the Time Stone. Like watching a video in rewind, dust and light coalesced into the form of Odin, who sat back up as his blood flowed back up into his body and his wounds sealed. Time resumed its normal course, this one act reversed and undone.

Odin blinked. "Did… did I just perish?"

"Technically. But it's okay, I fixed it."

"… You are a frightening man, Anthony Stark. And yet I find myself in your debt."

"We can hash out the details later. Right now, let's try and stop Thor from making himself an only child."

The God of Thunder was repeatedly punching Loki in the face, a boom of thunder accompanying each impact. "YOU! KILLED! HIM! OUR _FATHER_!"

" _YOUR_ FATHER!" snarled Loki through a broken nose and busted lip. He was already missing teeth. "YOU GET EVERYTHING! THE THRONE, HIS RESPECT, MOTHER'S LOVE, A BRIDE AND HEIR! WHAT IS LEFT FOR ME?"

"ENOUGH!" roared Odin, summoning Gungnir from the pocket dimension Asgardians seemed to have. He slammed it down and sent a pillar of fire into the air. Thor paused in his berserk assault, eyes wide enough to see the whites as he saw the father he'd witnessed dissolve in Asgardian death standing tall and proud. "Thor, attend to your bride! Guards, take this _Frost Giant_ to the prisons to await execution!"

"No!" cried Frigga. "My lord husband, I beg you…"

He roared in her face. It was enough to cow her. Odin truly seemed in danger of snapping. "I! AM! KING! MY WORD IS LAW!"

"Oh, Daddy. Just as loud as ever."

In the air in the center of the wreckage, a yellow portal opened, out of which walked a tall, statuesque Asgardian woman with black hair down to her mid-back and ghostly pale skin. She was clad in the rags of battle leathers, and her eyes had the hungry glint of a starving predator.

Odin's grip on his spear went slack. "Hela…" he breathed in horror and recognition.

"Surprised to see me? I admit, so am I. You're clearly not dead, so why ever would you release the spell holding me captive in eternal banishment?" She looked around at the ruins of the festivities. "A feast?" Her eyes zeroed in on Thor, who was now stood protectively in front of a trembling Jane. "Oh, I see. My replacement has beget you a grandchild. Well, well, well, that is cause for celebration." The venom in her smile could have withered the life from small animals in an instant.

"Father, who is this woman?" Thor asked, Mjolnir rolling nervously in his grip.

"Oh, brother dear, did nobody tell you? I am Hela, Goddess of Death, firstborn of Odin and Frigga. It was I he had the Dwarves forge that hammer for, not you. I helped our father here conquer the Nine Realms. Then he decided my ambition had surpassed its usefulness and he cast me away into a prison between the Realms." Hela grinned. "And now I have returned, to take my rightful place as Queen, and lead our people into a glorious era where all the galaxy bows down before our might!"

"Right. Well, not that I wouldn't love to see how this turns out, but I think it's time we wind down now." Tony focused, channeling eldritch energy through the Mind Stone, crafting a spell. A mandala of yellow light formed around his head as his eyes began to glow. " **Sit down. Shut up.** "

Hela's eyes became cloudy, and she sank down to her haunches, all the tension leaving her body.

"Tones… since when can you brainwash people?" Rhodey asked, dark skin several shades lighter.

"I've been capable since 2012. It's only since I got out of Hogwarts that I can do it from a distance."

Odin finally seemed to recover himself. "Men… take my traitorous daughter and son to the dungeon. I shall attend to them on the morrow." Odin swept around and walked away towards the palace. "The celebration is over!"

Thor shook himself out of his stupor. "Jane, are you alright?"

"Oh, yeah. Fine. Totally fine. I'm about to pee myself, I'm so fine." She let out a hysteric giggle. "My wedding turned into a Greek drama. At least I'll never be able to forget it, right?" She started to cry.

Thor moved to cradle her in his arms. "Friend Tony! Do what magic you must to pacify Loki as well. I don't want to take any chances."

"Your wedding, your rules." Tony extended his mind control over to the would-be king killer. Loki's face went blank, and he hung limp in the grip of the soldiers that grabbed him like he was high on opiates. He and Hela were led away in handcuffs, because of course _someone_ brought those to a reception.

Heimdall stepped forward. "Gather yourselves together, Midgardians. I feel it best if you returned home at this time."

"Sure. Can't wait to get back to the Tower. Stark has some answers to give," Natasha stated.

Tony sighed.

He was _so_ in for it.

* * *

 **3000 views. Not bad for less than a week out. I must be doing something right. Shout-out to all my reviewers. Thanos next chapter. I'm sure you can hardly wait! Then a few loose ends and an epilogue or two and this baby will be done.**


	7. Infinity War

**Here we are. The big one. The one we've all been waiting for. Thanos finally makes this play, and he'll never see Tony coming this time around. I hope I managed to do this masterpiece of an arc some small measure of justice. Let me know if I miss the mark, please.**

* * *

Tony and the rest of the Avengers rode the Bifrost home, leaving Thor to deal with a traumatized bride, a brother on death row, and a long-lost sister revealed to be a megalomaniac to deal with. Hell of a way to kick off the honeymoon. Tony did not envy the Asgardian prince.

Tony quibbled and hemmed and hawed, but eventually he was forced to come clean to the team. Doping himself with Vibranium, grafting the Infinity Stones into this body, experimental nanobot injections that could (less than .01% chance, but it had been there) have eaten him alive from the inside out. Surprisingly (to him), no one called him out for having delusions of grandeur or trying to become ultrahuman out of a compulsive need for power, as he'd feared. If anything, everyone seemed put out that he'd kept the whole thing secret.

"You always had this long gunslinger act, Tony, but I'm telling you, you don't have to do this alone," Rhodey had chastened him.

Once the reality of his cyborg status and permanent jewelry was out of the way, Tony came clean about being a time traveler as well. He gave a small lecture on quantum universes and time loops and other techno/magical babble that turned everyone but Bruce into drooling zombies by the end of it. To wake them back up, Tony uploaded 'movie' versions of his memories of the old timeline, which proved quite engaging. The final tally of it was, they believed him. Natasha said she'd always suspected he was an alien or something, with the rate he came up with world-changing inventions. Cheating with time travel actually made her feel _more_ comfortable than what she'd been thinking up.

Tony let everyone catch up on sleep, and then gave them a full security briefing on Thanos the next day. Using information divined from the Mind Stone (which consisted of Tony asking nicely and the knowledge flowing into his mind like the prophecies of a higher power) and intercepts from the galactic information network his satellites had started to pick up on and decode. It was devilishly tricky to hack a quantum-secured network, but JARVIS did it before his first cup of coffee. Tony showed them the facts and figures on Thanos and his Black Order of adopted children, how he swooped over a civilization, halved the population and indoctrinated the rest. He was the most notorious war criminal in the galaxy and was all but untouchable barring a coordinated multi-planetary assault, which of course wasn't going to happen. Politics only got even more divisive and petty when different species were involved, it seemed.

In happier news, the Iron Panacea hit the market. Tony was awarded the Nobel Prize for creating what was essentially the next step in evolution. One shot, and a person became effectively immortal, with physicality upgraded beyond even Super Serum levels and brains rewired and networked. JARVIS, FRIDAY, and Tony unofficially reigned as a triumvirate over the connected minds of humanity, supervising and smoothing out friction as more and more people everyday uploaded their very souls to the Internet. It was basically a friendly version of the Borg. People began to live out their days in vibrant, immersive virtual worlds straight out of the Matrix. In the real world, fashion extended down to what body you were wearing, as more and more advanced generations of Iron Mites were rolled out and body modification took on a whole new dimension. Extra limbs, unique colorations, you name it. Tony started up a new business called Iron Identity that hired people to spend all day coming up with and patenting original skins, which were traded among the community at a rate that boggled the mind.

Ferrinsula and New Eden (the unofficial winner of the naming sweepstakes by a significant margin) continued to schedule. Building a supercity larger than Texas took time, even with an army of builder bots and reconfigurable nanotechnology as part of the building process. Tony made sure to include a wide-open space with a couple square miles, roughly the size of the Golden City of Wakanda. This would be the battlefield for when Thanos sent his forces to kidnap/vivisect Tony and get his Infinity Stones. Afterwards, it would become an artificial jungle, his own version of Grand Central to go with the smaller parks and vegetation already integrated into each building. New Eden would be a carbon sink on a level never seen before. Tony _still_ was tempted to go with the self-replicating Iron Mite path but continued to hold off. JARVIS and FRIDAY kept finding bugs and glitches in simulations.

Odin finally got back to Tony. Apparently, following the pleas of his wife and heir, Odin had decided against just beheading Hela and Loki and being done with it. Instead, the two were stripped of their powers and got a one-way Bifrost trip to Sakaar, a garbage planet surrounded by wormholes that really did wonky things to the local spacetime. The two apparently ended up a couple, bonding over a mutual loathing of Odin and modern Asgardian society and carving out a comfortable life as bookies for the gladiatorial matches. Tony resolved to check in on them every now and again but moved them far down on his threat index.

Odin had made a decent call, for once.

When he finally called on Tony to repay the debt owed him, Tony got permission to use the Space Stone to set up permanent portals between Earth, Asgard, and the other Nine Realms. They were all together in the Yggdrasil nebula, they should work together, and having rifts allowing permanent easy access between them all should help with that. Earth was plunged into a new age as eight (well, seven, given the extinction of the residents of Svartalfheim) other planetary civilizations were brought into close contact.

Tony accidentally achieved world peace, the nations of the world coming together to unite their resources and collectively act to present a collective front as One Humanity, One Earth. Alien technology flowed in from trade, which Tony analyzed, upgraded, and released his own versions almost as fast as the originals were introduced.

A century's worth of progress occurred in the span of 2017 alone. Technology was now advancing so fast that it boggled even the aliens. The Ancient One made an historic decision and took Kamar-Taj public, letting the world know the existence of magic and offering to teach it to any who desired and proved worthy. Tony came out as a Master, and promptly started revealing his own line of Stark Relics, inventions that had their own sentience like his beloved Cloak. The Mirror Dimension became the trash dump of the planet, with what couldn't be recycled by Iron Mites just being tossed through a portal where it wouldn't do anyone any harm. Transportation was revolutionized as a mixture of research into the Space Stone, Sling Rings, and the Bifrost led Tony and the Iron Mind to producing legit Teleportation Pads. Airplanes, trains, even cars to an extent were rendered obsolete, though they were still offered as free services for those that couldn't afford or were wary of having their molecules transplanted instantly from one place to another.

Wakanda came out of hiding, only to belatedly realize that they weren't so advanced as they thought anymore. Still, the introduction of Vibranium tech led to ever greater technological wonders for humanity.

With Earth signing a treaty with Asgard and the Nine Realms, the planet apparently passed some threshold and was deemed worthy of joining galactic society. Suddenly interstellar craft and aliens from every corner of the galaxy started to show up. Peter Quill and his ragtag band of mercenaries that called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy popped in to visit his home planet. Tony finally got to meet Gamora, whom had died in the last timeline so Thanos could acquire the Soul Stone. She reminded him of a green Natasha. Drax was like Thor, blunt and honest and fine with the simple pleasures in life, while Rocket the racoon was like a mad scientist (well, more so than he already was) version of Tony. The Mind Stone translated Groot as well as it did any language, though it hurt Tony's head for some reason he couldn't explain. Mantis was just a sweetheart, like one of those anime girls with her big doe eyes.

Tony came to the conclusion that there was no logical reason to wait for Thanos to go get the other two Stones, especially when getting the Power Stone would involve devastating Xandar. Tony made a visit to the Nova Empire and brokered the transfer of the Orb to Tony's own hands with the Nova Prime Irani Rael (who looked remarkably like Glenn Close from back home), on the grounds that Earth could handle Thanos and wouldn't it be swell if Xandar was spared from the Mad Titan's gaze?

That done, and the Power Stone inserted into the palm of his left hand (and he thought the Space Stone had been a rush), Tony girded himself and took a visit to Vormir with a dear friend.

"Are you sure you're okay with this?" Tony asked as they climbed the mountain towards where the Stonekeeper waited.

"I have lived a life, Tony. I am ready to find peace," the Ancient One assured him. She had appointed Mordo as the new Sorcerer Supreme and accompanied Tony on his journey to acquire the Soul Stone. Theirs was a platonic love, but it was pure and true, the wise master and the grateful student. Hopefully it would prove sufficient a sacrifice for the Soul Stone.

Eventually, they came across a figure in black, sitting cross-legged in mid-air. Tony's eyes widened when he got a look at the being's face. "The Red Skull?"

The ghostly figure came to its feet. "I was known as that, once. Now I am just the Stonekeeper." The man regarded Tony. "One of only two in existence, it seems."

"I've always loved accessorizing. I just can't resist shiny things."

"You know the cost for what you seek?"

Tony, still hesitant, turned to look at the Ancient One. She smiled serenely and nodded to him.

"I do."

"Then pay it and see if the Stone deems you worthy."

Tony and the Ancient One walked hand in hand to the edge of the abyss. She gave him one last hug, and he kissed her brow. They stared into each other's eyes, saying all the words that needed saying without sound.

Then Tony hardened his heart… and gave a push.

There was a flash of orange light, Tony felt weightless and lost like he was on the Astral Plane, and he woke up in one of the pools on the barren world. An orange gem rested in his left hand.

Taking a deep breath, praying that he'd still be _him_ once this was over, Tony reached up and pressed the stone into his bare crown, at the very top of his head where the skull was open at birth. It sank into his skin, the metallic flesh flowing like water around the singularity until it was safely nestled in the grip of Tony's scalp.

And then each of the Stones glowed and Tony arched back as _infinity_ slammed into him.

* * *

 _Space. Direction and distance. The boundaries of Creation itself. The framework of dimensions._

 _Soul. Incorporeal essence. The essential spark of being. What brought life into the world and will leave when it ends._

 _Reality. Consensual existence. That which delineates between fact and fiction. Abstract and concrete simultaneously._

 _Time. Progress and events. The measure of existence. Past, present, future, all immutable yet flexible, nodes branching out into endless distance._

 _Power. Energy and force. The might locked within every quark. The impetus to rip apart or bind together if the cost was paid._

 _Mind. Perception and judgment. The capacity to learn. The font of intelligence, creating order out of chaos._

 _The components of Infinity._

 _United together, these six make up the universe. They_ **ARE.**

 **WE HAVE WAITED FOR YOU, ANTHONY EDWARD STARK.**

* * *

Thanos sat on his throne in the heart of The Sanctuary II. His Black Order, those he had adopted from the planets he'd 'saved' and honed into instruments of his will, stood before him. Cull Obsidian, Ebony Maw, Proxima Midnight, Corvus Glaive. Once Nebula and Gamora had been among their ranks, but both had betrayed him. The former by trying to kill him (and very nearly succeeding, he'd trained her well), the latter by running away.

"What of the Stones?" Thanos asked.

The Maw bowed. "After the… anomaly last month, all energy signatures point to one planet: Earth."

Thanos grit his teeth. " _All_ of them?"

The telekinetic hesitated slightly. "Yes, Mighty Father. Six signatures left Vormir that day and have since made their home with the humans. Readings suggest they all stay together at all times."

Thanos flexed the Infinity Gauntlet, which he never took off since resolving to abandon the schemes and proxies and hunt down the Infinity Stones himself. His empire had the most advanced scanners in the known universe. They could track the path of an insect on a planet's surface from a light-decade away. If this news was true, and there was no real reason why it couldn't be… it was troubling.

"So… someone beat me to it."

The sound of his flagship and mobile command center's announcement system went off. "Lord Thanos, we are being hailed."

"By whom?" he growled, curious. Who had the balls to contact him on his own vessel?

"He's calling himself Iron Man."

Thanos narrowed his eyes. The foremost of the guardians of the planet, and he suspected the holder of the Stones. Possibly possessing the powers of a God, now. "Let him through."

A holo-window opened before him. A Terran man stood facing him, tan of skin with dark hair. He wore a suit of red nano-armor, with a red cloak around his shoulders. The two somehow didn't clash. Thanos' eyes narrowed on the blue glow in the center of the man's breast. "Tony Stark, I presume."

"Mr. Harbinger of Death himself. Glad you could take my call."

"The insolence!" hissed Proxima, but Thanos held up a hand. There was no point getting worked up over disrespect.

"So, you know of me," Thanos stated rather than asked.

Stark smirked. Bringing up a finger to scratch his nose, a green glow emerged from his hand. "Oh, you and I go way back. You don't remember, but I do."

Thanos quickly caught on. "I see." Well, it was nice to know that he came close to winning in another life. "Is this so you can crow your victory in my face?"

"Oh no. Actually, I'm here to offer you an out."

"I'm listening."

"Satisfying as it would be to turn you and your whole operation to dust like _that_ ," Stark snapped, and his grin widened when Thanos couldn't help but twitch, "that just doesn't seem good enough for me. I don't just want you gone, I want you to _lose_. To believe so desperately you're in the right yet fail all the same. And, I'll admit, you gave me your own twisted respect last time, so I'll return the favor."

"What exactly are you proposing?"

"You and your army versus me and my army. A war to decide the fate of the universe. The whole galaxy will be watching, I already arranged it. So future generations can see the monster in the closet get vanquished or, on the off chance you win, the historic moment you 'saved' us all. One week, Earth time, from right now. I'll even promise to only use one Stone at a time."

Thanos raised a brow. "An honest fight? I didn't think you had it in you, Stark."

"Well, it's not like you have any real chance of winning. And if any of my side get hurt, I can just bring them back. Because I can do shit like that now. This is just so my conscience doesn't bother me because I didn't even give you a teeny-tiny ghost of a chance. And you're going to agree, because you know that if you don't I'll go through with just willing you into oblivion. And because, like all well-intentioned zealots, you just can't resist taking the risk you might succeed."

Thanos curled his fists. "Very well. I accept your challenge. Prepare for me to harvest the Infinity Stones from your cooling body."

A helmet appeared over Stark's face, with flat eyes and mouth that gave off a vaguely skull-like impression. "Bring it, crotch-chin."

With that, the transmission ended.

On Tony's end, he tilted his head at the JARVIS-bot holding the camera. "We done?"

"Indeed. Bravo on your delivery, Sir."

"Could have done with a better sign-off, Boss."

Tony held a hand over his heart. "Baby girl, you wound me. I worked really hard on that one."

Daya, FRIDAY's human avatar, scoffed. "I doubt that." She leaned on Jerry's shoulder, bringing up a hand to caress her bulging belly. The two already had a dozen digital children, but their first biological offspring was being awaited eagerly by its parents, siblings, and doting grandfather.

"Remind me again why we have to have this dumb fight in the first place. I thought you were out of the war business, Stark," Steve spoke up, from where he'd been watching the exchange from the side.

Tony sighed. Unbidden, the Cloak started massaging his shoulders. God, he loved that thing. It was even more appreciative since he added Vibranium stitching so it could integrate with his suit. "Simple. If I just obliterated him with my shiny new omnipotence, people would still worry that I was lying about him being gone and Thanos was still out there. A public defeat is the only way the people that flinch at his name like he's Voldemort will be able to sleep peacefully."

"If this guy's so scary, you sure we can beat him?"

"With the whole team juiced up on Iron Mites and the global military on standby?" Tony grinned. "Oh yes. And it will be _glorious_."

* * *

On April 27th, 2018, the Infinity War took place. On one side: Thanos, the Black Order, and a million Outriders. On the other: Iron Man (and the six Infinity Stones), Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Falcon, War Machine, Ant-Man, Black Panther, and 100 fully-weaponized Iron Legionnaires, with dozens of battalions from the United Nations Earth Defense Force waiting in the wings. Spiderman was forbidden from fighting, despite fervent complaints.

The battlefield was Ferrinsula, fully completed and yet deserted save for Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Camera drones from planets and news networks the galaxy over hovered around the planned battleground. Every second of footage would be analyzed for generations to come, as the most dangerous criminals and the foremost champions of justice of their generation clashed.

When the Sanctuary II entered the atmosphere, the Avengers readied themselves. Tony activated the Mark ∞, covering himself head to toe with Vibranium nanoparticles laced with enough lasers, repulsors, and shrunken ordinance (courtesy of Hank Pym, who released his formula after rescuing his wife from the quantum realm) to crack a moon. Thrusters were left out, flight being trusted to his handy Cloak of Levitation. The Infinity Stones thrummed under his skin, their energies mixing and flowing to create what he'd deemed Infinity Force, the power to fundamentally hack the universe and do whatever he wanted. He wouldn't be using it, but it was there at his fingertips if he so desired.

They fought. Thanos fell.

The galaxy rejoiced.

Tony was stuck with the bill for cleaning up all the corpses and repairing the damage to the island.

Thor brought in enough Asgardian liquor to soothe the wound.

And the Earth lived to see another day.

* * *

 **Yeah… it's pretty clear that I got a mixture of writer's block and loss of interest near the end, isn't it? I'm sorry to my loyal readers for the disappointment, but I figured I should at least release something instead of having this wait months for me to revisit it and get it 'right', considering the pace of my updates so far.**

 **There will be an epilogue, where Tony finds love and we get to see the happily-ever-after's for the rest of the squad. Stay tuned for one last update, assuming the poor ending doesn't lead to an angry mob and boycott.**


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